Inspirational and revealing.... I bought this book because I have a special relationship with my dog and was attracted to the topic offered.
I got much more than I expected and I am a new devotee of Ms. Grandin and her writing. I am not autistic, however after reading Ms. Grandin's book I recognize that I have autistic tendencies; that is some of the ways of autistic thinking that Ms. Grandin describes in this book are the same as mine, causing me to believe that there are just degrees of autism. I always thought that I was missing something in life; I couldn't understand how other people did things so easily and I could not; how other people seemed to handle people and situations with ease and I could not. In my family there are several members with ADD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and being able to find a connection between those things and my thinking was nothing short of miraculous. I have learned to embrace my different thinking and be able to understand how others think differently and I have found strength in that and can offer my strengths instead of focusing on my weaknesses.
In addition, I have a new appreciation for my dog and feel that I can relate to her and her needs much more effectively than before reading the book.
I think that this book should be required reading in school and I am it's new champion on the street; I tell everyone I meet with a dog about this book and I have told my friends and family. I think about it's themes almost every day, thinking in pictures, compression, abstract thinking versus reality and I hope to get as many people to read it as possible and spread the word.
I thank Ms. Grandin for putting herself out there in such a personal and understandable way.
The only thing that I can say as a negative, the reason for my four stars, is that Ms. Grandin's writing style is sometimes repetitive and jerky. Despite that, I couldn't put it down until I was finished reading it.
Simply....Incredible! This woman blows me away. Her insights not only into the nature of animals, but into the human realm, are astonishing. Grandin does a fantastic job making the scientific backround material fun to read. By this review,you've got the message that she literally translates how animals see and feel the world and because they are our partners in life and thru history, we owe it to them to treat them as humanely as possible. We literally cannot get along without them. If you read the book, the last 5 or 6 pages sum up the whole thesis. It's about how dogs and man are the closest of partners for over 100,000 years, how we taught and shaped the dog. But amazingly,the dog taught and physically shaped us. Read it, it's true. I even feel good about a tasty steak now.Remarkable. What a remarkable book. Grandin attributes her ability to understand animal behavior to her autism, which makes her thought processes and emotional responses more similar to animals than those of non-autistic people are. That undoubtedly helps a lot, but Grandin reminds me of Jane Jacobs, the trailblazing analyzer of cities - I believe Grandin is brilliant, and her thinking is based on keen observation unclouded by conventional assumption and beliefs. At the same time, Grandin slips in some of the state of the art findings by academic neuroscientists on how the brain works and the basis and function of emotions. I have read Ledoux and Damasio, whom she references, and it is wonderful how clear she makes things. Grandin treats her autism in more depth in other books, but what she does say in this book is fascinating. Occasionally, the book bogs down a bit in enumeration, but overall it is a great read. Grandin's intellectual leap at the end that dogs influenced human evolution just as humans impacted the dog's evolution from the wolf may or may not be correct, but it is wonderfully stimulating. It is easy to miss the author acknowledgements, which are found after the chapter notes, at the very end of the book. They make clear that it is Grandin, not her co-author, who has done the neuroscience research.
