Book Review - NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman (and an added word about bad critics)

Last week I found an interesting book while out shopping one day. It was called  NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman... or (in the American version) NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (the British publisher has a issue with the word "neurodiversity.") Until I found this book that day, I have never heard of Steve, the book, or his iconic Wired magazine article 'The Geek Syndrome' that was the seed of it, so when I first read it it was with virgin eyes. And after reading all 400-odd pages in two days all I can say is that this book is....

.... one of the best history books on any subject ever written. (Feel free to use this quote everyone.)

I could stop here, but after reading it I found and watched interviews of Steve on YouTube by a number of autistic-related groups, including NAS. And in one of them he talked about the few negative reviews his book was given and singled out one particular review.

The review in question stated that the book was unfair on regards to people with "low-functioning autism" because he over covers them in nine pages of the book.

Does that sound suspicious to you? "Nine pages"? What nine pages is the reviewer talking about? Well, there's a simple answer to that question. If you go to the book's index you'll find that the term "low-functioning individuals with autism" is listed to nine pages. And if you go to the pages in question you'll find the only mentions of the term "low-functioning autism."

That's just lazy reviewing. A page doesn't need to say the term "low-functioning autism" when describing a person with low-functioning autism, in the same way you can talk about sex without actually mentioning the word "sex." Its a disgustingly lazy review that an be easily misinterpreted by people who are unaware of what I just said earlier.

Unlike some reviewers (who just read the blurb on the cover or skim the Wikipedia page) I make the time to read or watch the actual main subjects of my posts. It'll be criminal if I didn't do so ... or try to do so within my means (even if it takes years to finally getting around to do so). I guarantee that (or your money back).

And for the record for those lazy reviewers who couldn't be arsed to read a whole feck'n book, if you did take the time to read this book properly (and not put it on your head as a hat) you'll find that chapter 2 - "The Boy Who Loves Green Straws" - is entirely the back story of one boy who can be described as "low-functioning" and the actions of his parents in raising him and how they got conned by the quacks into prohibitively expensive treatments to "cure" his autism. Its a cautionary tale to show the true misery caused by the confusion caused by the "Autism Wars" of the 2000s and the misconceptions about autism it continued to pedal to the masses. A whole 37-page chapter - ignored! Of the nine pages that reviewer was "referring" to only one is from that very chapter. The term "low-functioning autism" is only mentioned in that whole chapter. It's like saying a book about the LGBT community doesn't do enough coverage  about "same-sex marriages" because (according to the index) it only mentions it half-a-dozen times where in fact it has a whole chapter dedicated to it... and saying that chapter is "weak" because it only says the term once! This lazy review of a "masterpiece" just makes me....

This chapter is one reason Steve wrote this book and why I think this book is one of the best history books on any subject ever written. It provides a non-bias subjective perspective to the subject that can be scrutinized to no end to find little fault. It is properly researched with interviews of prominent figures, such as Lorna Wing, and examinations of the original papers by the likes of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. Steve has said that his aim for writing this book is "so no one else has too," so for it to be true he has to do the proper research.

It's no surprise really that the book is done so. Steve has been editor and contributor to Wired magazine, one of the most eminent publications about science, technology and geek culture. I know its not Nature, but tech magazines are equally as scrutinizing fact from fiction as any scientific journal when it comes to reporting scientific research. I mean, you can't imagine healing crystals been advertised in Wired, could you? Exactly. It's no wonder Steve's original feature 'The Geek Syndrome' created a huge response. Compared to most magazine features (which tend to stay in public memory for just a few weeks at most) Steve still get's emails about 'The Geek Syndrome' even now in December 2015, 14 years after its first printing. How many magazine articles can you think of that still gets such a response so many years later?

Steve has been about to tackle the subject of autism with an equally subjective and sympathetic light. He has been able to have a subjective scientific eye to the subject because of two things.

1. He studied psychology at Oberlin College (which has proven useful in dealing with a subject that involves a lot of psychiatry). 
2. How the subject of autism first came on his journalistic radar - by accident. 

In 2000 Steve was on a "geek cruise." (It was an attempt to hold a hacker convention in a non-traditional convention hall-like location by holding it on a ship. What? What did you think I meant by the term "cruise"?). There he met iconic computer programmer Larry Wall. He hoped to arrange an interview with him after the cruise. He said "That's fine.... but I should tell you, my wife and I have an autistic daughter."

A few months later he was working on the profile of Judy Estrin (one of the unsung builders of the internet). For research he approached her brother-in-law Marnin Kligfeld for an interview. He said "Sure... but just so you know, we have an autistic daughter."

The next day he was talking about this seemingly odd coincidence of encountering two autistic children in Silicon Valley he just encountered to a friend in a cafe. All of a sudden a woman at the next table blunted out to him "I'm a special-education teacher. Do you realize what's going on? There is an epidemic of autism in Silicon Valley. Something terrible is happening to our children."

That unexpected outburst of panic was the final stimulance Steve need to write 'The Geek Syndrome'. 

Steve also has sympathy for the people who have been victim to the whims of the neurotypicals. This is because Steve is gay.

 “My very being was defined as a form of mental illness in the diagnostic manual of disorders until 1974. I am not equating homosexuality and autism – autism is inherently disabling in ways that homosexuality is not – but I think that’s why I was sensitive to the feelings of a group of people who were systematically bullied, tortured and thrown into asylums.” - Steve Silberman, from this article in The Guardian (November 2015) 

Anyone with some knowledge of the history of society's attitudes towards homosexuals will know that in the mid-20th century gay men were the subject of psychiatric experiments involving electrodes and drugs to supposedly "cure" them. At that same time, autistic children were also subject to such experiments for the very same reason - to "cure" them. Steve has lived through the time all this was going on. One reason he moved to San Francisco in 1979 was that he could live “a gay life without fear”. It also helped that his parents were communist anti-war activists and he studied under the 1960s counter-culture heavyweight Allen Ginsberg. He is a natural outsider.

“I was raised to be sensitive to the plight of the oppressed. One of the things I do is frame autism not purely in a clinical or self-help context, but in a social justice context. I came to it thinking I was going to study a disorder. But what I ended up finding was a civil-rights movement being born.” - Steve Silberman, from this article in The Guardian (November 2015) 

He's not making out that last bit. There is an active "civil-rights movement" happening right now in the world. Autistic people are fighting back against decades of oppression, ridicule and been treated as medical curiosities that needed treatment so that they can become "normal." The very idea of making humans 100% perfect was supposedly put in history's trash bin when the Nazis lost the War and the concentration camps were liberated. But somehow the idea of "the perfect child" persisted well into the 21st century. Although the basic idea sounds fine (all parents want a healthy child), but the idea can be turned into an excuse for cruelty in the disguise of help. The development milestone chart is just a chart of statistics showing the average path of development. The fact that your child isn't meeting those milestones on time is not a sign of ill health. A chart shouldn't dictate when a child should gain the ability to say "ma ma." And in later years the idea of strangers dismissing involuntary movements and actions they have almost no control over as "bad behaviour" is as bad as treating someone differently due to their skin been rich in melanin. They can't really help it, in the same way a blind person can't help been blind.

I find that the best writings on a subject are by outsiders - people who initially had little or no knowledge of the subject, like Bill Bryson on A Short History of Nearly Everything. This may sound counter-intuitive, but its true. It may sound like a good idea to have someone who is involved in a subject in a professional way to write on the subject of their profession, like Carl Sagan on space, but there is the possibility of the writer having some form of bias. If we are talking about a former employee writing a history of their employer, of course they is going to be some bias. You won't expect a book about autism by Andrew Wakefield to be a positive read. It'll be just one massive piece of anti-vaccine propaganda.
Also I find works by experts in their field a bit of a struggle to digest, due to their use of a lot of technical jargon. The best writings use as little jargon as possible. Not everyone knows what the "clock speed" of a microprocessor represents. but you can explain it by comparing it to a pendulum clock. You got to make the subject relate to the reader, like Tom Standage did when he compared the impact of the telegraph in the mid-19th century to the impact the internet did in the 1990s in his book The Victorian Internet.

Been an outsider (with sympathy to the people affected) Steve has written one of the best history books on any subject ever written. And I would have been very disappointed if it wasn't when I bought it based on two things on the cover.

1. It has a foreword by Oliver Sacks (one of the last things he ever wrote and the reason the book came to be in the first place - he cattle-prodded Steve to write this book (metaphorically))
2. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction (the first science book to do so).

The only true criticism the book truly has is that its 400 pages long. Steve originally planned to write a 200-page book. But it could have been worst - Steve has 800 pages of material, so what you are reading is just half of all he written. He does plan to publish some of it online, including the last ever interview of Lorna Wing (before she passed away in 2014), so there's something to look out for.

To rap up I can only repeat what I said earlier... 

This book is one of the best history books on any subject ever written. 

Please read it (properly).