A Perfect World: A Father's Quest to Unriddle the Mysteries of Autism

Autism New Zealand estimates that up to 20,000 New Zealanders are directly affected by autism, and parents and professionals are hungry for authoritative new perspectives on this baffling disease.

Written as both a moving memoir and an international survey of autism by a journalist and father of an autistic child, A Perfect World is the first of its kind to be published in Australasia. The book is strong on early detection information, addressing many of the questions readers who may be concerned about their own offspring may need to know. It also addresses practical controversies such as the alleged link between autism and vaccine emissions.

Cohen combines internationally gathered reportage, including interviews with some of the world's best-known autism researchers and educators, with a personal touch to produce a work that challenges current thinking on autism: autism is not a mysterious subject to be feared or officially ignored, he argues, but a challenge to be understood; only with such an improved understanding can we hope for more and better educational services, earlier diagnosis, better treatment, and less social stigma.

Cohen's account of his six-year-old son and of other families coping with autism, including one family in which the mother killed her autistic daughter, gives him a unique perspective. Strongly anecdotal, dramatically told, informed by the latest scholarship, and, in places, warmly argumentative, A Perfect World is perfectly relevant to the study and popular understand of the history of the disorder, especially in the context of a country where services are virtually nonexistent for a condition that in one way or another directly affects thousands of people.

Commended for BPANZ Book Design Awards: Non-Illustrated Book 2008.