A Perfect World (Paperback, illustrated edition)

When David Cohen's 3-year-old son, Eliot, is diagnosed as autistic, he has no idea what the condition is or what it means. He sets out on a global quest, taking in Europe, the Far East, North America and New Zealand, in order to learn more about the incurable neurological malady, which in Britain and the United States is estimated to afflict as many as one in every 150 children. (In New Zealand Autism New Zealand estimates that up to 20,000 New Zealanders are directly affected by autism). He meets some of the world's leading autism researchers, clinicians, epidemiologists and educators along with other parents grappling with the same bewildering condition, including a mother who was driven to kill her autistic daughter. He pieces together the life of Leo Kanner, the scholar who first described autism in 1943. He meditates on what makes a good life, the nature of communication and the meaning of fatherhood and sonship. A Perfect World is a unique international survey, drawing on scores of lengthy interviews conducted over four years, as well as being a moving family memoir. It offers new insights on the diagnosis of autism, intervention therapy, research and special-needs learning. It is a story that will appeal to parents, teachers, community workers, health specialists and fans of travel writing alike. "With remarkable erudition and literary elegance, David Cohen, the father of an autistic boy named Eliot, has crafted an extraordinary account of autism in his own family, and in the world. In this engaging and honest book, Cohen shows autism in all its vicissitudes - in England, New Zealand, Korea, the US and Israel. A gifted writer, Cohen moves so gracefully across narratives, scientific discourses, artistic genres, historical periods and continents that you hardly notice the full force of his prose until the conclusion when, suddenly, it hits you: Cohen has made us see autism as an essential part of the human condition." Professor Roy Richard Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism, Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University, USA