ADHD & Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table

by Blake E. S. Taylor
New Harbinger; $14.95
Purchase ADHD & Me

Our public discourse on ADHD and learning disabilities includes a lot of big voices—pharmaceutical companies, professors—that talk about people with cognitive differences. But in this din, the voices of people who live this experience are often silenced.

This silence is elegantly broken in Blake Taylor’s ADHD & Me—a must-read for everyone who cares about young people with ADHD. At the astoundingly young age of 17, the author immerses the reader in the day-to-day experience of life with an attentional difference, and offers concrete solutions to the challenges of navigating a school system and a world hostile to cognitive diversity.

Perhaps most important, Taylor’s story represents the second wave of ADHD public discourse. His gifts, and the gifts of ADHD, fly off the page, challenging the medical model that sees ADHD only as a deficit, as a problem to be cured. He is a deep, creative thinker—unlocking doors at the age of three with a toy hammer; inventing a 13-foot-wide slingshot; and, yes, lighting fires at the dinner table.