Here are 100 books that Visual Thinking fans have personally recommended if you like
Visual Thinking.
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In 2011, after years reporting on media and technology for Wired, I published The Art of Immersion, about how digital technology is changing the way we tell stories. Then I joined Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab, started the executive education course Strategic Storytelling, and put together the toolkit that inspired The Sea We Swim In. The ostensible subject of all this was storytelling, but the common thread, I came to realize, was the role stories play: They facilitate pattern recognition, the skill we need to make sense of our random world. The pattern that’s governed the past 15 years of my life, in other words, has been pattern recognition.
Obviously, some of us are more aware of patterns than others. Simon Baron-Cohen—a psychologist at Cambridge, and one of the world’s leading authorities on autism—has found that a facility for pattern recognition is strongly correlated not only with gender (males predominate) but with autism.
He led a survey of 600,000 Britons aimed at determining if they were primarily empathizers, adept at connecting with other people, or systemizers, more interested in detecting patterns and learning how things work. Those at the extreme end of systemizing were considerably more likely to be autistic.
Baron-Cohen’s empathizer/systemizer questionnaire is included at the back of the book. Taking the bait, I found myself on the cusp of extreme. Which may explain a lot.
A groundbreaking argument about the link between autism and ingenuity. Why can humans alone invent? In The Pattern Seekers, Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen makes a case that autism is as crucial to our creative and cultural history as the mastery of fire. Indeed, Baron-Cohen argues that autistic people have played a key role in human progress for seventy thousand years, from the first tools to the digital revolution. How? Because the same genes that cause autism enable the pattern seeking that is essential to our species's inventiveness. However, these abilities exact a great cost on autistic people, including social…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
My journey began as a high school camp counselor at the Ability Center of Greater Toledo in Ohio. As I worked with children who had neurodevelopmental differences and collaborated with a co-counselor who had cerebral palsy, I saw how people with differences were marginalized and devalued despite being insightful, empathetic, passionate, funny, and talented. My appreciation for their strengths and perspectives shaped my approach as a pediatric neurologist, BCBA, neuroscientist, researcher, and founder of Cortica, which is focused on a whole-child, neurodivergent-affirming approach to care for autism and other neurodevelopmental differences. Reading is an important way for me to stay connected to the strengths-based lens I began cultivating in my teens.
We live in a world that all too often pathologizes autism and sees autistic people as broken and in need of fixing. In this book, Dr. Barry Prizant sees neurodivergent people through a strengths-based lens.
I appreciate the importance he places on listening to and understanding the experiences of autistic people and how he uses those experiences to illustrate the unique gifts that autistic people bring to the world. Dr. Prizant has helped to inspire the continued evolution of our Cortica clinical care model, and his book highlights the importance of amplifying neurodiverse voices.
Winner of the Autism Society of America’s Dr. Temple Grandin Award for the Outstanding Literary Work in Autism
A groundbreaking book on autism, by one of the world’s leading experts, who portrays autism as a unique way of being human—this is “required reading...Breathtakingly simple and profoundly positive” (Chicago Tribune).
Autism therapy typically focuses on ridding individuals of “autistic” symptoms such as difficulties interacting socially, communication problems, sensory challenges, and repetitive behavior patterns. Now, this updated and expanded edition of Dr. Barry M. Prizant’s Uniquely Human tackles new language such as shifting from “person-first language” to “identity-first language,” diversity of identity…
My journey began as a high school camp counselor at the Ability Center of Greater Toledo in Ohio. As I worked with children who had neurodevelopmental differences and collaborated with a co-counselor who had cerebral palsy, I saw how people with differences were marginalized and devalued despite being insightful, empathetic, passionate, funny, and talented. My appreciation for their strengths and perspectives shaped my approach as a pediatric neurologist, BCBA, neuroscientist, researcher, and founder of Cortica, which is focused on a whole-child, neurodivergent-affirming approach to care for autism and other neurodevelopmental differences. Reading is an important way for me to stay connected to the strengths-based lens I began cultivating in my teens.
I read Jory Fleming's book in just one day, profoundly moved by his insights as the first autistic Rhodes Scholar. This book explores an issue that my patients encounter each day: Namely, how to navigate the nuances and complexities of a world that is designed for neurotypical brains.
Jory’s approach to emotional understanding and social interactions has inspired me to approach life with greater empathy and curiosity, examine the limitations of neurotypical thinking, and further explore the richness of the autistic experience. This book isn't just enlightening; it's a heartfelt reminder of the strength in our differences and the pressing need to bridge those differences with understanding.
An unforgettable, unconventional narrative that examines the many ways to be fully human, told by the first young adult with autism to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
As a child, Jory Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for people, and couldn't manage the outside world. Slightly more than a decade later, he was bound for England, selected to attend one of the world's premier universities.
How to Be Human explores life amid a world constructed for neurotypical brains when yours is not. But the miracle of this book is that instead of dwelling on Jory's…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
My journey began as a high school camp counselor at the Ability Center of Greater Toledo in Ohio. As I worked with children who had neurodevelopmental differences and collaborated with a co-counselor who had cerebral palsy, I saw how people with differences were marginalized and devalued despite being insightful, empathetic, passionate, funny, and talented. My appreciation for their strengths and perspectives shaped my approach as a pediatric neurologist, BCBA, neuroscientist, researcher, and founder of Cortica, which is focused on a whole-child, neurodivergent-affirming approach to care for autism and other neurodevelopmental differences. Reading is an important way for me to stay connected to the strengths-based lens I began cultivating in my teens.
Parents’ and professionals’ judgments of neurodivergent children, which are often based on perceived deficits, can limit those children’s choices and opportunities. Dictating the course of neurodivergent children’s care without involving them as active participants can also have dire, long-lasting consequences.
This book by Martha Leary and Anne Donnellan illustrates the importance of understanding the sensory and movement experiences of autistic people, which is only possible if you take the time to actively listen to those experiences and use them to shape an approach to care. The book helped to inform the care model we use at Cortica and reinforced my commitment to providing a personalized level of support that integrates children’s engagement in the process and honors each child’s unique journey, needs, and strengths.
I’ve had a life-long love affair with the arts. I intended to become an artist, but ultimately became a psychologist researching psychological aspects of the arts. My first book, Invented Worlds, examined the key questions and findings in the psychology of the arts. In Gifted Children: Myths and Realities, I wrote about gifted child artists. My Arts & Mind Lab at Boston College investigated artistic development in typical and gifted children, habits of mind conferred by arts education, and how we respond to works of art. The walls of my home are covered with framed paintings by young children, often side by side paintings by professional artists.
This is a classic book by German-born psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, in which he lays out the principles underlying our perception and understanding of works of visual art. One of the major principles discussed is the human tendency to see the simplest form possible in any visual array. This ‘simplicity principle’ is also used to explain the intelligence and inventiveness of children’s art. In a brilliant chapter called Growth, Arnheim shows us that children are not striving towards realism; rather they are trying to create the simplest possible recognizable structural equivalent for the object they are representing. The inventiveness with which children reduce complex forms to simple structural equivalents requires far more intelligence than mindless copying.
Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.
A part of me is reluctant to recommend books on art. The same part of me is reluctant to write books on art. After all, a work of art should speak for itself. Then I remembered that for most contemporary art shows, a catalog is produced, and that catalog typically features an explanatory essay by some sympathetic scholar or critic. If the art of today requires verbal elaboration, how much more will the art of the past—especially the remote past—require such commentary? These recommendations are a selection of some favorite texts about how art comes into being—and is part of our being.
In the late 1990s, when I was writing a short history of the Phaidon Press–a pioneer imprint of art books both affordable and beautiful—I used to visit Gombrich at his home in north London. His own career as art historian was entwined with Phaidon’s fortunes. I asked him if it were true that he used to get an adolescent to read his texts to check for clarity of expression.
The legend was exaggerated, of course. But Gombrich’s prose still strikes me as admirably free of academic obfuscation, and this book is filled with lucid discussion of what is happening, perceptually and psychologically, when artists invite viewers into their ‘worlds’.
Considered a great classic by all who seek for a meeting ground between science and the humanities, Art and Illusion examines the history and psychology of pictorial representation in light of present-day theories of visual perception information and learning. Searching for a rational explanation of the changing styles of art, Gombrich reexamines many ideas on the imitation of nature and the function of tradition. In testing his arguments he ranges over the history of art, noticing particularly the accomplishments of the ancient Greeks, and the visual discoveries of such masters as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, as well as the…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
I'm a designer, a teacher, a father, a husband, and a friend. I love beautiful things and personally want to know why I find certain things more beautiful than others. I love learning about the world and finding connections between everyday experience and art. When I say “art” I really am blending art, design, architecture, landscape architecture, product design, etc. I believe everything is connected in some way. If I were to pigeonhole myself in any way I would call myself a generalist design thinker. I draw, I write, I make little objects, I make big objects – I see very little difference in any of these things.
This book outlines how the visual field operates at a psychological level.
I am an architect and cannot believe that we don’t teach straight from this and other Arnheim books more often. If you want to know what is happening to you, why you get chills up your spine when looking at art, read this book.
Arnheim is a psychologist, not a designer, so he breaks art down from this perspective.
For thirty-five years Visual Thinking has been the gold standard for art educators, psychologists, and general readers alike. In this seminal work, Arnheim, author of "The Dynamics of Architectural Form", "Film as Art", "Toward a Psychology of Art", and "Art and Visual Perception", asserts that all thinking (not just thinking related to art) is basically perceptual in nature, and that the ancient dichotomy between seeing and thinking, between perceiving and reasoning, is false and misleading. This is an indispensable tool for students and for those interested in the arts.
I'm currently an Honorary Fellow in Social Theory at the University of York, U.K. For more than five decades I've been working to promote more reflexive perspectives in philosophy, sociology, social theory, and sociological research. I've written and edited many books in the field of social theory with particular emphasis upon questions of culture and critical research in the expanding field of visual culture. Recent projects include Interpreting Visual Culture(with Ian Heywood), The Handbook of Visual Culture, and an edited multi-volume textbook to be published by Bloomsbury,The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture. The passion to understand the thought and visual culture of both the ancient and modern world continues to inform my work.
Crary’s work provides a theoretical and empirically informed synthesis of the work of theorists like Berger, Debord, Baudrillard, Barthes, and Sontag. Like these earlier writers, the technological transformations of visual culture are at the heart of the social transformations of the modern world. To understand modernity is thus first to make sense of its visual logics, procedures, and practices. This general argument allowed the author to enter the granular historical details of how seeing and 'observation’ have become essential to the concerns of modern life. What he calls 'techniques of the observer’ are in fact the core sensory apparatus that has helped to shape the institutions and practices of modern life.
What can be visualized is correlated to the technical affordances and historical development of representational practices. This makes technologies of the visual central to social analysis. Some of the most powerful drivers of modern life are thus linked to…
Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle.
In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity.
Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing…
As a writer, I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and ambivalence. How does that apply to the self? What does it mean to present myself to others? How do I appear to the world and how close is that to what I see myself to be? Are we ever truly seen—or willing to be seen? In a world where cameras exist everywhere and we are encouraged to record rather than simply be, how do we look in a mirror? Hannah Arendt said that we could tell reality from falsehood because reality endures. But I feel that nothing I experience endures; nothing remains the same, including the reflection. If anything lasts, it may be my own make-believe. Everything I write is, in some way, this question. Who is that?
This is a book of essays about the act of looking, especially looking at photographs and paintings and animals and other people. Thus these are essays about history, memory, suffering, beauty, and the self. Berger had a generous spirit; he wrote often about the lives of peasants and spent the last forty years of his life in rural France. Berger gazed upon the world in all its forms with composure and curiosity.
As a novelist, essayist, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I was thrown into the deep end to learn about autism when our first son was diagnosed as autistic. As first-time parents, how were we to know that the struggles we faced went beyond the norm? We also have twins, one of whom is ADHD and the other dyslexic. Thus, not only have I spent a lot of time learning about autism, but I also enjoy turning to fiction to learn how others both struggle and find solutions. I started writing because the bedtime routine with my kiddos was very difficult. Nearly twelve years later, I am still using my writing to overcome the obstacles in my life.
I was surprised to see this on a list of neurodiverse books because I hadn’t remembered that Hannah, the professional cuddler has aphantasia which means she cannot form pictures in her head.
This story is an opposites attract where the characters have to live together for ninety-two days if they are to inherit a building. Hannah’s warmth is the polar opposite of Winter’s reserved coldness which makes living together difficult. However, the more Winter learns about how Hannah thinks and functions, the more she thaws.
I loved that each character helped the other step beyond her comfort zone.
An enemies-to-lovers lesbian romance with an ice queen whose frosty facade is melted by the power of touch.
Hannah Martin has an unusual job: she’s a professional cuddler. While she has a big heart for her clients, she hasn’t found someone special to snuggle up to in her personal life.
Winter Sullivan isn’t looking for love. She’s an aloof workaholic who’s built walls of ice around herself. She would rather drive toothpicks under her fingernails than cuddle, and she certainly doesn’t want to share her space with anyone.
When Winter’s estranged father dies, he leaves her one last surprise: she…
