Read "Not Even Wrong" by Paul Collins

While not a new book, Paul Collin's Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism was new to me when I first heard of it this summer when the author was interviewed by Krista Tippet for "Being" (formerly "Speaking of Faith").

I am always interested in the stories of other families, curious for clues and way markers that explain where autism fits, how it has affected other people and shaped their lives.

Collins is the author of several books, a professor of writing at Portland State University, and the father of Morgan, who has autism.

Not Even Wrong is a beautiful book - one part memoir, one part history. In recounting the story of Morgan's early symptoms, diagnosis and therapy, Collins weaves in a forgotten and sometimes unknown history of autism.

He writes about Peter the Wild Boy, a resident of 18th century Germany who was captured in the Black Forest and eventually landed in the court of King George I. Collins brings him to life on the page, a nearly mute, energetic young man who could climb trees like a monkey, eschewed clothing and was never understood by the people who thought they'd rescued him. He was immortalized by his famous contemporaries Swift and Defoe, and yet faded into history, forgotten after his death.

Collins also writes about two Austrian researchers, Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner who, on different sides of the world and unbeknownst to each other, simultaneously defined autism for the first time in 1943.

He writes of Bruno Bettelheim, another Austrian "researcher" who famously declared that autism was caused by unfeeling parents, specifically "refrigerator mothers." Bettelheim did immeasurable damage to families and was not exposed for the fraud that he was - not a doctor at all, but a lumber salesman- until after his suicide in 1990.

Collins draws a map through history from 18th century Germany to a lecture hall at Microsoft in the 21st century. All the while he writes movingly of Morgan, his bright, sweet, firstborn who, when all is said and done, is a boy who happens to have autism.

"It's not a tragedy, it's not a sad story, it's not the movie of the week," he writers. "It's my family."

Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism by Paul Collins, paperback edition, 2004.