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Summary
Summary
The captivating subject of Oliver Sack'sAnthropologist on Mars, here is Temple Grandin's personal account of living with autism extraordinary gift of animal empathy has transformed her world and ours. Temple Grandin is renowned throughout the world as a designer of livestock holding equipment. Her unique empathy for animals has her to create systems which are humane and cruel free, setting the highest standards for the industry the treatment and handling of animals. She also happens to be autistic. Here, in Temple Grandin's own words, is the story what it is like to live with autism. Temple is among the few people who have broken through many the neurological impairments associated with autism. Throughout her life, she has developed unique coping strategies, including her famous "squeeze machine," modeled after seeing the calming effect squeeze chutes on cattle. She describes her pain isolation growing up "different" and her discovery visual symbols to interpret the "ways of the natives"Thinking in Picturesalso gives information from the frontlines of autism, including treatme medication, and diagnosis, as well as Temple's insight into genius, savants, sensory phenomena, etc. Ultimately, it is Temple's unique ability describe the way her visual mind works and how she first made the connection between her impairment and animal temperament that is the basis of extraordinary gift and phenomenal success.
Author Notes
Temple Grandin was born August 29, 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a bestselling author, doctor and professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, and leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. Grandin was diagnosed with autism in 1950. She was immediately placed in a structured nursery, had speech therapy, and had a nanny spend hours playing turn-based games with her. At the age of four, she began talking and her progress continued.
In 1970, Grandin received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire. She received her master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and in 1989, she received a Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Grandin, being a high-functioning autistic, is widely-known for her work in autism advocacy. She has been featured on major televisions programs such as the Today Show and ABC's Primetime Live. She has also been featured in Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, and the New York Times. Grandin was the subject of the Horizon documentary "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow" and was described by Oliver Sacks in the title of his narrative book: An Anthropologist on Mars.
Grandin's bestselling book: Thinking in Pictures is scheduled to be released as an HBO film in 2009. Grandin's Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human have also been bestsellers. Grandin lives in Colorado, but has speaking engagements on autism and cattle handling around the world.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her second autobiographical volume (after Emergence: Labelled Autistic), Grandin, a high-functioning autistic profiled by Oliver Sacks in his recent book, An Anthropologist on Mars, offers a series of original, linked essays on her life and work. An assistant professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University, her heightened ability to visualize allows her to make sense of the world by constructing concrete visual metaphors; for her, every concept must be tied into her nonverbal ``video library'' of particular people, places and associations. By thus enabling Grandin to put herself in the place of cows and other animals, her visual imagination has helped her to design humane livestock-processing equipment (these designs have been so effective that they now handle one-third of the nation's cattle and hogs). Throughout these essays, Grandin blends personal anecdotes with plainspoken accounts of scientific approaches to autism and methods of treatment, like drug therapy and a ``squeeze machine'' she invented to modify sensory stimulation. Although her prose is uneven, her insights and achievements are astonishing. Ultimately, Grandin finds within science and autism the basis for belief in God, given that her designs, which spring from her powers of visualization, reduce suffering and promote calm in both the animals and herself. Photos. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An extraordinary view into the workings of an autistic mind. Grandin, a professor of animal behavior (Colorado State Univ.) and a world-renowned designer of livestock equipment, attributes her creativity, technical skills, and understanding of animals to the autism that has set her apart from most of human society. Unlike the rest of us, Grandin does not think in words. As she describes it, she has an ever-growing videotape library in her head, which she can manipulate like a computer program, retrieving images from memory, altering them, rotating them, combining them. So different is she that she has always felt like an outside observer, comparing herself to ``an anthropologist on Mars'' (the phrase became the title of Oliver Sacks's recent book, in which he profiled Grandin; Sacks contributes a foreword to this volume). Lacking social intuition and bemused by the emotional range of others, she relies on logic and an elaborate set of rules to guide her behavior. While other humans may be a puzzlement, Grandin has a remarkable empathy for animals, especially cows (the original title for this book was A Cow's Eye View). It was her observation of cattle's reactions in squeeze chutes that led her to design a squeeze machine for herself that she uses daily to calm her anxieties. Besides revealing her own survival techniques, Grandin tries to explain the many subtypes of autism and the various drugs--antidepressants, anticonvulsants, corticosteroids, etc.--that have been used to treat the disorder. Her flat, almost mechanical writing style makes these sections somewhat tedious, but the information in them will be of considerable interest to parents of autistic children. For the general reader, her revelations about herself- -growing up, meeting the right teachers, and finding the right career niche--and her insights into animals are what make this account so fascinating. Includes a resource list on autism. The inspiring story of a courageous, dedicated, and most unusual woman.
Booklist Review
A most remarkable woman, Grandin describes her deepest feelings while telling how she made herself a strong and valued individual. Autistic, she was helped by her mother, the book's dedicatee, and mentors who included a high-school science teacher, a cattle-rancher aunt in Arizona, and a Swift meatpacking plant manager. Attacks of nerves and panic nearly overwhelmed her in her teens, but carefully selected and supervised drugs eased many of those problems. After earning a doctoral degree, she undertook her first work project, which was called the "Stairway to Heaven." Instrumental for her in developing that and other methods for the humane treatment of food animals was her ability, determined in some measure by her autism, to think in pictures, her profound caring for the animals, and her engineering capabilities; fully one-third of U.S. facilities for handling hogs and cattle use her designs. Readers of Oliver Sacks' Anthropologist from Mars [BKL Ja 15 95], the title article of which is about Grandin, will want to read Grandin's own heartwarming real story. --William Beatty
Choice Review
This work represents a unique contribution to the understanding of autism, and will interest researchers and general readers alike. Grandin is a person with autism who has studied the literature on her disability intensively. In this volume, she distills information from her researches that she has found helpful or relevant. She interlaces this information with anecdotes from her personal history, supplemented by examples drawn from others' experiences. Thus, she gives us a perspective on drug treatment for autism from the point of view of the drug-taker, including detailed summaries of medical facts as well as strongly held opinions bolstered by personal narratives. Grandin ranges freely from her personal history to citations from medical and psychological literature, from her spiritual quest to detailed descriptions of the animal handling facilities she has designed. Although the writing is uneven, with problems in transitions between sentences and paragraphs, the book is most seriously flawed by the author's tendency to state her opinions as facts. Nonetheless, this fascinating book should be in the library of anyone interested in disabilities, autism, the nature of language and thought, and the boundaries of human experience. General; undergraduate through professional. L. E. Hewitt Pennsylvania State University
Library Journal Review
In her autobiography, Emergence: Labeled Autistic (LJ 5/15/86), Grandin (animal studies, Colorado State Univ.) related how, as a high-functioning autistic adult, she overcame her disability to become a designer of livestock-handling equipment. Recently profiled in Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars (LJ 2/15/95), Grandin also lectures on autism at meetings and conferences. Using insights from scientific studies, autobiographies by autistic adults, and her own experience, she lucidly explains how people with autism differently perceive and process visual and sensory information and experience and express emotions, as well as develop social skills. She reviews diagnosis and treatment of autism, and discusses its association with talent and genius. Throughout the book we learn of Grandin's own strategies for coping with her autism and how autism has given her an advantage in understanding the behavior of other animals. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the subject.Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L. Cal. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. 11 |
| 1 Thinking in Pictures: Autism and Visual Thought | p. 19 |
| 2 The Great Continuum: Diagnosing Autism | p. 43 |
| 3 The Squeeze Machine: Sensory Problems in Autism | p. 62 |
| 4 Learning Empathy: Emotion and Autism | p. 82 |
| 5 The Ways of the World: Developing Autistic Talent | p. 96 |
| 6 Believer in Biochemistry: Medications and New Treatments | p. 111 |
| 7 Dating Data: Autism and Relationships | p. 131 |
| 8 A Cow's Eye View: Connecting with Animals | p. 142 |
| 9 Artists and Accountants: An Understanding of Animal Thought | p. 157 |
| 10 Einstein's Second Cousin: The Link Between Autism and Genius | p. 174 |
| 11 Stairway to Heaven: Religion and Belief | p. 189 |
| References and Selected Readings | p. 207 |
| Resource List | p. 221 |
