Book Review #1: NeuroTribes - Steve Silberman

Hello there and welcome to a different initiative on this blog where I’ve decided to occasionally put out a few book reviews along the way. Although these are definitely more of a personal endeavor, I’m sure there are tons of you reading fanatics out there and who doesn’t love a few good book recommendations right?

I will be keeping most of these medicine-based for the sake of the theme, plus medical novels that one might have read are always a useful thing to mention in personal statements or interviews and hopefully this series will help you discover some good reads you might have been missing out on.

This particular post has been a collaboration with @med_students_read (www.thelifeofamedicalstudentinengland.com) on instagram so be sure to check them out! You could also find the same on my instagram. Follow for regular updates on there as well!

‘NeuroTribes’ is a beautifully told, humanizing and important take on Autism, unraveling its history and its future.

Most medical novels that I’ve read so far have been very generalized, not exactly based on just one disease, syndrome or aspect of medicine so this was a first timer for me and it was undoubtedly a very educational, but also an emotional, experience.

It’s written in a very historian style, and although it centers on Autism and Asperger Syndrome, it takes into question a wide range of neurological disorders, how they came to be, their increasing prevalence at an alarming rate, and their symptoms and impacts using different case studies.

It did have a few chapters where the writing was quite slow but made up for this with some equally fascinating chapters that would not fail to pique your interest.

Overall, I would say that it was a real eye-opener and quite an interesting read, an added bonus if neurology interests you.