Often when the topic of autism, usually including my own, comes up in conversation, I’ll get a “have you heard of Temple Grandin?” And I had, yet I had never read any of her writing until now.

I liked this book for the depth it went into detailing visual vs verbal thinking. I learned a lot of interesting and useful information. I realized that I am a visual thinker. I deeply connected to a lot of Grandin’s personal experiences and the experiences of those she talks about in her book.

However, Grandin’s views on autism are largely old-fashioned and outdated. She is in her seventies so I am not surprised. Every autistic person is entitled to their own individual opinion about autism but at times it was hard to read, especially all of the unnecessary person-first language (which is also a matter of preference to the individual but for an undoubtedly part-autistic audience is an odd choice).

I was really turned off when Grandin started praising Elon Musk and the like as “geniuses.” There is more to genius than morally dubious white men. Was there no one else she could have explored?

I did learn quite a few things from this book but would hesitate to recommend it to a non autistic person who is ignorant about autism, as they often are (understandably, from what people are taught to believe about autism). The actual subject matter was often redundant, but I’m glad I powered through for the last chapter on animals and consciousness, which was nice on its own but did feel like it got off track from the main point of the book.