Explaining Humans: Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2020

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So I would have given it 3 stars, it wasn't too bad apart from the strong "not like other girls" vibes that I picked up from Dr Pang. Observe people's behavior and adjust your assumptions about them as you go along, getting a clearer picture with every step. I have worked with autistic children whose coordination of mind with body was much more evidently a more serious problem but she felt like an extra-terrestrial having to cope with the unfathomable behaviour of human beings.

Of course part of the subjective experience for many is a judgmental temperament; we can’t fault someone for a personality trait. I had no idea ASD and ADHD go together so commonly and it was interesting to see the combination from a personal perspective. Exactly what it promises, the instruction manual to human behaviour explained in a concept us science nerds can understand.

Listening to Camilla Pang talk about the challenges of figuring out how to navigate the neurotypical world, even with a diagnosis and a supportive family, is illuminating and helpful. While the scientific analogies prove personally useful to Pang and could be generative for a group discussion on alternative ways of considering social life, Pang’s overloaded analogies and prescriptions serve poorly as generalized guides to humans—even for other people with neurodivergent profiles.

At the core of this memoir is an exposition of human nature written from the perspective of an individual who always felt like she was on the outside looking in.Challenged by her conditions, Pang has used models to help guide her, and it all makes sense even from a non-autistic perspective.