Animals in translation

I'm very divided about this book. I think it's a very important book and would wish more people who work with animals would read it. It has a lot of valuable information for anyone dealing with cattle or house pets. Her deep-rooted idea of autism as something abnormal is a little off-putting - I don't take offense at all at the comparison with animals, I love animals. But her paradigm is still very much white and Western - that humans are somehow superior or higher evolved and I guess future works about inter-species communication will have to go further than she does here. Still, it's important and groundbreaking and really interesting in a lot of parts, and I hope that for who decides to give it a try the fascinating bits of information about practical dealings with animals can make up for its repetitiveness, disorganization and sometimes old-fashioned views. Some bits about the meat industry and cattle industry can be tough for sensitive readers.

This book is, to me, most interesting for offering a different perspective. I'm amazed at all the non-autistic people taking umbrage at how an autistic woman decides to describe herself. If anyone should be allowed, surely it is someone with actual autism?

Grandin is not the only autistic person who I have seen favorably make a comparison between autistic people's minds and animals. I think it's kind of telling that other people automatically read this as a kind of insult.

I take a star off because of the book's inaccuracies such as the ones noted by other readers. However, if you are looking for a different perspective, the inaccuracies actually add to the charm a bit; here is the mind of someone else who doesn't match the image of what a 'normal put together' person should be like or sound like. Someone who is not naturally gifted with vocabulary, yet still made contributions to the world when no one thought she would be able to.

People write they refuse to read because of her contributions to making more humane meat packing plants. I find that astounding. Even if you are against meat packing plants, they aren't about to disappear tomorrow (probably not until synthesized meat becomes widespread, which could take several decades or more), so why should cows suffer more in the meantime? That's just taking political correctness to the point that it punishes the ones you aim to help. There's a strong argument to be made that one of the worst things you can do to an animal is make it afraid, and Grandin makes a decent case for this.