Thinking in Pictures

My Life with Autism

By: Temple Grandin

Narrated by: Deborah Marlowe

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 Like that the ends of the chapters were updated with collections ro any out of date information.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.

Good information!

I like the story. It shows the struggles of someone with Autism. It’s a different type than mine but I can relate to some of the things.

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.

I wish this book was around when I was a kid

When I was a child and I went to kindergarten I didn't understand anything my fellow students were doing! I didn't understand the importance of an address or a phone number. In fact I didn't get the whole purpose of any of it! I was putting a room with a woman who taught me how to read. It wasn't an easy process! In fact math was a problem for me and if it hadn't been for one guy in the fourth grade I wouldn't have passed to the fifth grade. He helped me to memorize mathematics and I will always be grateful for that help! The woman who taught me to read also taught me about writing. It was not an easy process because I never understood how to read until she taught me. Then she taught me how to write and to write a story. I went on to join the young author's guild and write a few books. I still didn't understand anything about school. When my parents divorced my father took me to a new school system and refused to put me in those schools. from there I struggled in school. I struggled in life! They told me I had ADHD and that didn't help. It wasn't until I was an adult that I even learned what Asperger's syndrome was and that I was diagnosed with it! For decades I struggled to make sense of a lot of things! what finally helped was a counselor, the right teachers at the right times coming into my life and a shaman! It was working with this shaman that I began to work on myself and started to truly understand Asperger's syndrome. changed. now a decade later this book comes across my desk. I really wish my parents knew about this book in 1980 when they made the decision to put me on ritalin. I love all the information the author put in this book and really gives us a feeling of how she sees the world. again I wonder why this came to me at this point in my life and then I found out there's a possibility I'm going to have a child. looking at this information I'm making sure that the mother reads this book. Asperger's syndrome is present throughout my entire family and extended family. I believe this book came in so that her and I would be aware that there are treatments available and if we start soon enough that child can have a more, I don't want to say a better life, but it'll be a lot better than what I hit! As you go through this book look at it from the much larger picture If you don't have anybody with autism in your family. This book really helps because I was able to articulate to a few people finally how to communicate with me. I'm grateful the author wrote this book and I'm grateful she updated it! I'm going to recommend this book to a lot of my friends! One of them I recommended the book to them before I was even halfway through the book and she finished it in a fraction of the time it took me to read it. Now she's having her daughter tested because she started talking and then stopped. The author may have just changed somebody's life and that's why I believe this book came to me for a reason! I'm grateful this book was written!

Good information

There is some good information, but the narration was boring and robotic. Not recommended as an audio book, probably much better to read and use as a reference. There was much more clinical information than I expected.