Thinking in Pictures

My Life with Autism

By: Temple Grandin

Narrated by: Deborah Marlowe

Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the United States. She also lectures widely on autism - because Temple Grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us.

In this unprecedented book, Grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. Writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world.

What emerges in Thinking in Pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity.

©2006 Temple Grandin (P)2009 Random House

Critic reviews

"There are innumerable astounding facets to this remarkable book....Displaying uncanny powers of observation....[Temple Grandin] charts the differences between her life and the lives of those who think in words." ( The Philadelphia Inquirer)
"A uniquely fascinating view not just of autism but of animal - and human - thinking and feeling, [providing] insights that can only be called wisdom." (Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand)

Insight Gained

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Highly recommended if you want to gain insight to understand autism.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Temple herself is a beautiful individual who has helped me deeply in understanding my son!!

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, I wanted to learn even more and gain more insight to Temple's amazing life.

Any additional comments?

I appreciate this author in sharing her experience with her gifts! I embrace my son everyday and try to reach him in the best way possible!!!

Great!

Informative and eye opening to statistics. Like that the ends of the chapters were updated with collections ro any out of date information.

Wonderful!

This book really helped me to understand how my son views the world! I would recommend it to anyone who has someone in their life with Autism.

Great book & well read

An interesting book that was written by an autistic person who miraculously earned a doctorate and now sports a long list of accomplishments in the cattle industry and is quite famous. The book talks in detail about what it’s like to be autistic as told by a person who considers herself bridging both worlds. ..strangely it is also about cows. There is a lot of credible information about both to be sure! I give it a four out of five simply because the last part of the book reveals some strange perceptions about God and religion but she wraps it up nicely after that.

excellent

a fascinating and brilliant woman; as another reviewer stated, should win a Nobel prize for changes she has designed and implemented to make the cattle industry more humane, as well as her work on autism, as an ambassador almost, helping people learn how the world needs all kinds of minds.

wow

Wow. Listening to this is the first time I have ever hard someone explain exactly how I think and remember things. Thank you.

What you SHOULD know about autism

When I started this audiobook, I didn't have very much knowledge about autism. This book gave me a clear idea of what it's like to have autism and debunks common misconceptions about it. She also relates her experience to that of people without autism. If you're trying to gain a greater understanding of this topic, I highly recommend this audiobook.

Scientific, informative, and enlightening!

Temple Grandin is one of the most influential people in the world, elected by Times magazine in 2010. If you want to get information about autism, this is the first book you should read. It is a wonderful book. Another thing you should know is that you will not absorb everything in one listening / sitting. You will have to listen to it at least three times. It contains a lot of useful and clarifying information. I highly recommend it!

A wonderful insight to autism

Autism in its very finest hour told by someone who suffers herself from the challenge of being highly autistic. She looks at it from all angles and explores all the possibilities from a personal and medical perspective. Recognising that medical science has moved on she then goes on to ensure updates to new information. I found this book fascinating and easy to understand.

Interesting look Inside Autism

I got this book on a whim, a friend of mine had mentioned it during a long discussion about how being sociopaths probably succeed more in business. I don't know how we got to discussing that..

Anyway. Back to this book.

Temple Grandin clearly and eloquently describes what it is like to be autistic, and how her mind works. She is able to describe it well enough that I feel like I can fairly well wrap my head around autism, and what it must be like.

I always wondered if I was a little aspergerish, but after I read this book, I realized that I'm not. I'm just anti-social and introverted. Not all the time though, don't worry. I can still party like a rockstar.

The latter half of this book gets pretty technical, and starts to talk about autism, various treatments, education, upbringing, etc. It seems a bit like an owner's manual for autism, which isn't as interesting to me, which is why I knocked it down a star.

The first part of this book, however, is fantastic, and if you are at all interested in finding out what it is like to experience the world with autism, check out this book.