Thursday Dec 17, 2020
CAMILLA PANG Shares AN OUTSIDER’S GUIDE TO HUMANS: an instruction manual for life, love, and relationships by a brilliant young scientist whose Asper...
When Camilla Pang was five years old, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans—a guidebook, something that could explain why people behave the way they do. In her mind, she was an alien within her own species, someone who understood the words but couldn’t speak the language. In this powerful and intuitive debut, she lays out a guide to human nature using scientific principles and theories as her roadmap. Pang—who holds a PhD in bioinformatics from University College London and is a postdoctoral scientist—is neurodivergent. She has ASD (autism spectrum disorder), ADHD (attention deficit anxiety disorder), and GAD (generalized anxiety disorder). Together these might make everyday life for her impossible, but in AN OUTSIDER’S GUIDE TO HUMANS she explains how her studies made clear the ambiguous, often contradictory, and hard to understand actions she sees humans make every day. The book is the life manual she longed for as a child—accessible to anyone, neurotypical or neurodivergent, who has wondered why we behave the way we do.