John Donvan and Caren Zucker spoke about their book, In a Different Key, at Politics & Prose on Wednesday, January 20, 2016.

The first autism diagnosis was made seventy-five years ago, and today one in sixty-eight children has an autism spectrum disorder. In their comprehensive history of our still-evolving understanding of autism, Donvan, an Emmy Award-winning Washington-based ABC Nightline correspondent and Zucker, Peabody Award-winning producer and co-author of the six-part PBS series ”Autism Now,” look at theories of autism’s causes, the range of treatments that have been endorsed and discarded, and the various cultural understandings of autism. Above all, they home in on the experience of parents, care-givers, and those with autism themselves, tracing the struggles for acceptance and for an understanding of autism not as a disability but as a difference.