Temple Grandin is one of the more unique authors writing today. She’s autistic, and makes a living designing and implementing humans slaughterhouses.

In this book, she explains animal behavior by explaining how animals think. Autistic people have the interesting perspective of in some ways thinking more like animals than most people do. The title comes from the fact that she thinks in pictures (like animals probably do) instead of in language.

The book does include specific explanations of behavior, mostly of horses, dogs, and cows, and relates this to how they think and how this has been influenced by natural selection, human breeding, and learning. Some of the most interesting parts are when it explains how animals, autistic humans and normal humans are similar and different, and uses this to illustrate how unexpectedly similar we are to animals.

One of the major conclusions are how animals and autistic people have unique skills that the rest of the world usually overlooks. She gives examples of dogs that can predict seizures and blood sugar levels, and autistic people whose fixation on details make them do extremely well in quality control jobs.