The Autistic Brain: Thinking across the Spectrum Temple Grandin Richard Panek Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013 ($28)

When Grandin, best-selling author and autism activist, began giving lectures on the disorder in the 1980s, it wasn't difficult to spot the audience members with autism because they were mostly on the severe end of the spectrum. Today, however, her audiences are filled with shy kids and those she calls “Steve Jobs, Jrs.” The shift is indicative of the increasing visibility and broadening definition of autism spectrum disorders, which, by the latest estimate, affect one in 88 children. In The Autistic Brain , Grandin and science writer Panek trace the evolution of autism and look ahead to scientific advances and educational reforms.

Diagnosed with autism in 1949 at age two, just two years after it was first proposed as a disorder, Grandin has had a front-row seat to the entire history of autism. Psychoanalytical theories of the 1950s and 1960s that blamed cold, distant mothers gave way to diagnostic categories based on checklists of behaviors. Although these categories are tweaked, the idea that autism is defined by its behaviors has stuck. Grandin believes that a new era of science will finally look beyond these outward manifestations to the biological underpinnings of autism.