I Am Utterly Unique

This alphabet book gives an understanding of, and helps to celebrate, the unique qualities and attributes of children with Asperger Syndrome.

Presents a collection of poems pointing out the variety of intellectual strengths and personality traits possessed by children with Asperger syndrom and high-functioning autism.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “As sweet and funny and sad and true and heartfelt a memoir as one could find.” —from the foreword by Augusten Burroughs Ever since he was young, John Robison longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother, Augusten Burroughs, in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” It was not until he was forty that he was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way he saw himself—and the world. A born storyteller, Robison has written a moving, darkly funny memoir about a life that has taken him from developing exploding guitars for KISS to building a family of his own. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien yet always deeply human.

Comprised of the accounts of twelve heterosexual couples in which the man is on the Autism Spectrum, this book invites both partners to discuss their own perspectives of different key issues, including anxiety, empathy, employment and socialising. Autism expert Tony Attwood contributes a commentary and a question and answer section for each of the twelve accounts. The first book of its kind to provide perspectives from both sides of a relationship on a variety of different topics, Neurodiverse Relationships is the perfect companion for couples in neurodiverse relationships who are trying to understand one another better.

Outsmarting Explosive Behavior - A Visual System of Support and Intervention for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders - is a visual model designed to help decrease, and in some cases eliminate, explosive behavior. The model's positive approach to explosive behavior uniquely eliminates the need or temptation to assign blame-to oneself or others-that otherwise often complicates the process of controlling explosive behavior. In a fold-out poster-style format, four train cars represent the stages in the cycle of explosive behavior: Starting Out Picking up Steam Point of No Return Explosion. Using this train metaphor, the parent/facilitator and student (older individuals can do it more independently) take a close look at each stage in the process and using stop, go and special stop/yield signs, identify triggers, design positive interventions to prevent the train from starting out in the first place and preventing a car from moving to the next stage. The ultimate goal is to prevent the individual train cars from hooking up, causing a runaway train ending with an explosion. The three-piece package contains: a book for facilitators that explains the model a large poster-size visual showing the train model with ready-made parts that can be personalized a workbook for the individual with AS designed to draw out the personalized interventions that will make the model work. Though designed to encourage participation by the person with explosive behavior, positive results are seen even when the model is implemented on behalf of someone unable to actively participate, such as nonreaders.

This book explores the moral place of the dead in our lives and in our afterlives. It argues that our lives are saturated by the past intentions and values of the dead, and that we offer the dead a form of modest immortality by fulfilling our obligations to remember them. In the first part of the book, the author examines the scope and limits of our obligations to the dead. Our obligations to respect the wishes of the dead are more substantial than commonly acknowledged, but they can be overridden in a range of cases when they conflict with the vital interests of the living, such as in organ donation and wealth inheritance. By contrast, the author contends that the obligation to remember, at least collectively, cannot be completely overridden. In the second part of the book, the author argues that tradition offers the dead a form of modest immortality—the dead live on insofar as we enact those intentional states with which they most identified. He draws on the Confucian view of ritual to argue that ritual absorption "reincarnates" the dead in the actions of the living. Finally, the author defends a Jamesian account of a pluralistic self that is consistent with the view that we have obligations to the individual dead and that the selves of the dead are pragmatic constructions. Living with the Dead will appeal to scholars and students interested in the philosophy of death, ethics, and cross-cultural philosophy.