Book description
A father explores his son s autism, and delivers a hopeful message. A
Perfect World is a unique international survey, drawing on scores of
lengthy interviews conducted over four years, as well as being a moving
family memoir. It offers new insights on the diagnosis of autism,
intervention therapy, research and special-needs learning. It is a story
that will appeal to parents, teachers, community workers, health
specialists and fans of travel writing alike. "With remarkable
erudition and literary elegance, David Cohen, the father of an autistic
boy named Eliot, has crafted an extraordinary account of autism in his
own family, and in the world. In this engaging and honest book, Cohen
shows autism in all its vicissitudes  in England, New Zealand, Korea,
the US and Israel. A gifted writer, Cohen moves so gracefully across
narratives, scientific discourses, artistic genres, historical periods
and continents that you hardly notice the full force of his prose until
the conclusion when, suddenly, it hits you: Cohen has made us see autism
as an essential part of the human condition." Professor Roy Richard
Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism,
Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University, USA David
Cohen is a Wellington-based journalist with a particular interest in
higher education. His work appears frequently in publications in New
Zealand and abroad, including the Christian Science Monitor, the
Jerusalem Report and the Australian. An Asia-Pacific correspondent for
the past 12 years with the Washington-based Chronicle of Higher
Education, he has also written more than 200 articles and weblog pieces
for the British Guardian. His work has been published, as well, in the
Financial Times, the Independent on Sunday, the New York Times, the
Seattle Times, the South China Morning Post and the British Sunday
Times. Closer to home he contributes a fortnightly column on media
affairs - the longest-running column of its type in the country - for
the National Business Review. An anthology of his journalism, Welcome to
the Campus of Struggle (Dunmore Press), was published in 2004. He is the
father of three boys, one of whom is severely autistic.
