June, 21, 2003 archives

back in january, i placed a hold on american normal: the culture of asperger's syndrome at the library. it took quite a while for my name to percolate to the top of the list, but it finally did.

it's a great book—very similar in style to postville: a clash of cultures in heartland america—written almost like a travelogue of learning about asperger's syndrome.

the core of the book really is about how we define normality, and the author comes across as being just the right amount of skeptical with regard to how simplistically the psychiatric establishment can appear to diagnose and try to treat anything outside a narrowing band of normalcy, but he also does not dismiss the genuine afflictions of the people he talked with.