Jeff Sexton
Solid Enough Primer On The Topic Marred By Dearth Of Bibliography. This is one of those books where, as others have noted, O'Dell clearly has his own perspectives and they clearly come through, and yet he also does a reasonably balanced job of showing both sides to any given issue - while clearly favoring whichever side he does. For those perhaps unfamiliar with the Actually Autistic/ Autistic Adult community and the reasons it clashes so often with researchers of all forms and levels, this is a solid compendium of the issues at hand and an introduction to just how complicated some of them can be.
The primary blemish here is the dearth of the bibliography, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text - at least in the Advance Review Copy form I read weeks before publication. Adding to this is the editing/ formatting choices of at least this format - hopefully corrected in the full final form - that left footnotes in odd places that made it unclear at times whether one was reading a part of the narrative or a footnote, which got quite jarring indeed at times.
Still, for the actual information contained here, even while this particular Autistic doesn't *fully* agree with many of the perspectives of the author, this truly does at least show the relevant issues and shows each of them from a variety of angles - which is always appreciated.
Recommended.
Originally posted at bookanon.com.
Solid Enough Primer On The Topic Marred By Dearth Of Bibliography. This is one of those books where, as others have noted, O'Dell clearly has his own perspectives and they clearly come through, and yet he also does a reasonably balanced job of showing both sides to any given issue - while clearly favoring whichever side he does. For those perhaps unfamiliar with the Actually Autistic/ Autistic Adult community and the reasons it clashes so often with researchers of all forms and levels, this is a solid compendium of the issues at hand and an introduction to just how complicated some of them can be.
The primary blemish here is the dearth of the bibliography, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text - at least in the Advance Review Copy form I read weeks before publication. Adding to this is the editing/ formatting choices of at least this format - hopefully corrected in the full final form - that left footnotes in odd places that made it unclear at times whether one was reading a part of the narrative or a footnote, which got quite jarring indeed at times.
Still, for the actual information contained here, even while this particular Autistic doesn't *fully* agree with many of the perspectives of the author, this truly does at least show the relevant issues and shows each of them from a variety of angles - which is always appreciated.
Recommended.
Originally posted at bookanon.com.
