Long-deceased Viennese doctors, unless they’re called Freud, rarely make newspaper headlines. But one has recently done so on both sides of the Atlantic. On April 19, the academic open-access journal Molecular Autism published a detailed article by the Austrian medical historian Herwig Czech about Hans Asperger, the Viennese pediatrician whose name has since the 1980s designated a […]
What we now call autism has surely been a part of the human condition for as long as human beings have existed. But the way different cultures understand, talk about and treat people who exhibit the symptoms of autism — difficulty or disinterest in social interactions, repetitive behaviors and language impairments — can vary widely. […]
Looking for summer books that test your brain but are still accessible? Author and podcaster Steve Almond (@stevealmondjoy), whose most recent book is “Bad Stories,” joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to share some of his picks. His list features works by mostly women writers (with the exception of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and Hartley Lin’s “Young Frances”) […]
A review of the new book by Edith Sheffer, Asperger’s Children: The Origin of Autism in Nazi Vienna. Dear fellow oddballs: this man is not your friend, and never was. One day recently I was minding my own business and planning to write either a long article or a short book about how many of our […]
On 1 July 1941, a young Austrian physician named Hans Asperger signed a document transferring a toddler named Herta Schreiber to Spiegelgrund, an asylum for mentally ill children on the outskirts of Vienna. Two-year-old Herta had suffered diphtheria and meningitis, leaving her severely disabled. She “must present an unbearable burden to her mother,” Asperger, then […]
Interview with Edith Sheffer by Robin Lindley, a Seattle-based writer and attorney, and the features editor of the History News Network. Professor Sheffer generously spoke by telephone on the evolution of her new book about Asperger and her original research. Robin Lindley: What inspired you to investigate and write about the life of Dr. Hans Asperger and […]