Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's
by John Elder Robison
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Elder RobisonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-09
ISBN: 0307396185
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780307396181
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's
Book Review: Superb memoir - Must read!
Summary: 5 Stars
look me in the eye: my life with asperger's is a funny, yet sad, memoir by John Elder Robison about his life with Asperger's, a type of autism. Robison tells pertinent stories from his childhood into adulthood, demonstrating his struggles to connect with his peers. He is a natural storyteller, stirring up laughter and sadness from the reader. He explains his personal growth with Asperger's and satisfies any curiosity the reader may have about the disorder.
A trait of Asperger's Disorder is to lack empathy. Robison tells stories about how he tried to connect with his peers as a child, but could not. At 5 years old, he could not comprehend that playing with others required compromise; he became insistent with his peers on what he thought was the right way to stack blocks or explained all he knew about dinosaurs until they walked away. At 9 years old, he learned to listen and understand how his peers wanted him to respond; he learned to be empathetic to what they said. He learned that if a peer said, "'Look at my Tonka truck,'" an appropriate response would be, "'That's a neat truck! Can I hold it?'" Before he learned empathy, his response may have been: "'I have a helicopter, '" or "`I rode a horse at the fair!'"
Another trait of Asperger's Disorder is to become extremely focused on something. In junior high school, Robison had an interest in electronics after receiving an electronics kit for a Christmas present. This interest evolved into his disassembling and reassembling old radios and TVs. He started hanging out at an engineering lab at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to gain more understanding about electronics, but did not comprehend the college level equations. Smart and self-motivated, he taught himself electronic components and how to modify sound quality on amplifiers. Shortly thereafter, he started modifying local musicians' amplifiers. Later, he modified the amplifiers of KISS, April Wine, and Pink Floyd. He made the first smoking guitar for Ace Frehley of KISS: "'Ampie, can you make one that shoots rockets?'"
[...]
Summary of Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's
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.
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