Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn't "look" autistic. But, as he's quick to point out in this memoir, autism "looks" different for just about everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Diagnosed with ASD at age five, McCreary got hit with the performance bug not much later. During a difficult time in junior high, he started journaling, eventually turning his pain e into something empowering--and funny. He scored his first stand-up gig at age 14, and hasn't looked back. An #OwnVoices memoir breaks down what it's like to live with autism for readers on and off the spectrum.

    With humor and insight, he describes the events of that day (his brain exploded just before his brother's wedding!), as well as the long, difficult recovery period. In the process, he introduces readers to his family, his principal support group, as well as a constant source of frustration and amazement. Irreverent, coruscating, angry, at times shocking, but always revelatory, his memoir takes the reader into unfamiliar territory, much like the experience Alice had when she fell down the rabbit hole. That he lived to tell the story is miraculous; that he tells it with such aplomb is simply remarkable.More than a decade later he has finally reestablished a productive artistic life for himself, still dealing with the effects of his injury;life-long half-blindness and epilepsy; but forging ahead as a survivor dedicated to helping others who have suffered a similar catastrophe.

    They can be euphoric one moment, despairing and depressed the next. There are an estimated 10 million sufferers of BPD living in America today—each displaying remarkably similar symptoms: ● a shaky sense of identity ● sudden violent outbursts ● oversensitivity to real or imagined rejection ● brief, turbulent love affairs ● frequent periods of intense depression ● eating disorders, drug abuse, and other self-destructive tendencies ● an irrational fear of abandonment and an inability to be alone For years BPD was difficult to describe, diagnose, and treat. But now, for the first time, Dr. Jerold J. Kreisman and health writer Hal Straus offer much-needed professional advice, helping victims and their families to understand and cope with this troubling,shockingly widespread affliction.

    But maybe I am not.  For most of her life, these thoughts plagued Amy Wilensky as her mind lurched and veered in ways she didn't understand and her body did things she couldn't control. While she excelled in school and led an otherwise "normal" life, she worried that beneath the surface she was a freak, that there was something irrevocably wrong with her.  Passing for Normal is Wilensky's emotionally charged account of her lifelong struggle with the often misunderstood disorders Tourette's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder.  A powerful witness to her own dysfunction, Wilensky describes the strain it bore on her relationships with the people she thought she knew best: her family, her friends, and herself.  Confronting the labels we apply to ourselves and others--compulsive, crazy, out of control--Amy describes her symptoms, diagnosis, and her treatment with courage and a healthy dose of humor, gradually coming to terms with the absurdities of a life beset by irrational behavior.  This compelling narrative, by turnstragic and comic, broadly extends our understanding of the won-drously complex human mind, and, with subtlety and grace, challenges our notion of what it is to be "normal."