I’m excited to announce that today is the official ”pub date” for my new book The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Neurodivergent Brain (Completely Revised and Updated Second Edition), published by Balance, an imprint of Hachette USA. It’s virtually a new book from the one I originally wrote back in 2010 (The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain). I wrote the first edition when people were asking ”neurodiversity? say what?” There just wasn’t a lot of familiarity with the term. But something happened in the last fifteen years to propel the term neurodiversity into everyday conversations.
I personally think the catalyst was Steve Silberman’s book NeuroTribes (god rest his soul!) in 2015. Steve and I were talking as he was working on his book. I remember one incident when I was driving from Los Angeles to Yuma, Arizona to do a workshop there for a public elementary school, and I was about halfway there, smack dab in the middle of the desert, and I stopped to have dinner at a Famous Dave’s restaurant (are they still around?) Anyway, I’m waiting for my meal and my phone rings and it’s Steve calling from San Francisco, telling me about a discovery he’d made in his research about Hans Asperger (one of the founders of autism) that helped explain why his characterization of autism was so rosy, while Leo Canner’s version (he was the other ”discoverer” of autism) was so bleak. According to Steve, Asperger was trying to save kids from being exterminated by the Nazi’s and so he bent over backwards to promote their assets, abilities, and advantages. And Steve got so excited about it that he just had to call someone! Of course, after his book came out, people brought up the supposed fact that Asperger also sent a sizeable proportion of ”lower functioning” kids with autism to the extermination camps. I don’t know what really went on, I wasn’t there. But it’s stirred up the kind of invective that I hate to see happening so early in the neurodiversity movement. We’ve got to be tolerant toward each other, since that’s what we’re expecting from neurotypicals toward us. Anyway, I hope that my book rings true for you and that you’ll share it with your family, friends, teachers, therapists, employers or employees, and anyone else who might benefit from seeing a more positive view of neurodivergent children, teens, and adults.
Here’s a video I made that describes 15 key features that makes this book the ”go to” book for learning about neurodiversity at this stage in its development, its ins and outs, its practical applications, and much much more! I’d love to hear you reaction after you’ve read it. You can contact me at: thomas@institute4learning.com.
Read more about neurodiversity, and see other videos on my webpage on The Power of Neurodiversity
