"An extraordinary work... mesmerizing... this book has not done what anything else has for autism," Ann Bauer, Washington Post.

*Pulitzer Prize Finalist 2017*

The astonishing story of autism as discovered and felt by parents, children, and doctors. Nearly seventy-five years ago, Donald Triplett from Forest, Mississippi became the first child diagnosed with autism. "In a Different Key" tells the remarkable story of the world his diagnosis created - a compelling human drama that takes us across continents and through some of the great social movements of the twentieth century.

The history of autism is, above all, the story of families struggling for a place in the world for their children. It is the story of women like Ruth Sullivan, who stood up to a medical establishment that blamed "refrigerator mothers" for causing autism, fathers who pushed scientists to search harder for treatments, parents who forced schools to accept their children. But many others played leading roles: doctors like Leo Kanner, who pioneered the understanding of autism, scientists who argued over how to cure autism, and people with autism, like Temple Grandin and Ari Ne'eman, who explained their inner worlds and advocated a "neurodiversity" philosophy.

This is also a story of fierce controversies: from the question of whether there is really an "epidemic" of autism and whether vaccines had a role in it, to scandals related to "facilitated communication," one of the many treatments proven to be dead ends. There are also dark turns: we learn about experimenters who gave LSD to children with autism or shocked them with electricity to change their behavior, while the authors reveal, for the first time, that Hans Asperger, the discoverer of the syndrome bearing his name, may have cooperated with the Nazis to send children with disabilities to their deaths.

Altered and expansive, the story "In a Different Key" takes us from a time when families were ashamed and children were condemned to institutions, to an era where parents and people with autism are pushing not just for inclusion, but for a new understanding of autism: as a difference rather than a disability.

Pages: 688, Dimensions: 13x13cm