My Review of "In a Different Key"

John Donvan and Caren Zucker's In a Different Key:  The Story of Autism tells the story of a psychological disorder that was ignored for decades, and only recently.  It moves from those early decades in which children were institutionalized, often in appalling conditions to that period in the 1960s and 1970s when "refrigerator mothers" were blamed for the condition.  In a Different Key also chronicles those individual -- families and researchers -- who provided care and developed our contemporary understanding of autism.

In a Different Key certainly focuses on the largely-American narrative of that history, so there are definitely other pieces of the history of autism that are left to be told.  So there are no shortage of rival egos and camps as well as overrated developments that go into the telling of the story of autism.  In the end, then, In a Different Key cannot be the only resource for the telling of autism's story.  But it's certainly a good place to begin.

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.