Book Review – Asperger’s Children

Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an excellent book about a difficult topic. Though Hans Asperger’s studies of neurodivergent children began to lay the groundwork for what we now know as the Autism Spectrum, his active cooperation with the child murdering regime in Vienna in the late 1930s and early 1940s taints every contribution he made. Edith Sheffer carefully analyzes not only Asperger’s complicity in the deaths of “undesirable” children but also the influence Nazi psychiatry had on the theories he developed. The author is also careful to distinguish fact from evidence-based supposition and pure guesswork. Organization is good, readability is high, but this is still a difficult read due to the unflinching coverage of events.

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