Seeing What Others Cannot See: The Hidden Advantages of Visual Thinkers and Differently Wired Brains

For over 25 years, Thomas G. West has been a leading advocate for the importance of visual thinking, visual technologies and the creative potential of individuals with dyslexia and other learning differences. In this new book, he investigates how different kinds of brains and different ways of thinking can help to make discoveries and solve problems in innovative and unexpected ways. West focuses on what he has learned over the years from a group of extraordinarily creative, intelligent, and interesting people -- those with dyslexia, Asperger’s syndrome, and other different ways of thinking, learning, and working. He shows that such people can provide important insights missed by experts as they also can prevent institutional group think. Based on first-person accounts, West tells stories that include a dyslexic paleontologist in Montana, a special effects tech who worked for Pink Floyd and Kiss and who is now an advocate for those with Asperger’s syndrome, a group of dyslexic master code breakers in a British electronic intelligence organization, a Colorado livestock handling expert who has become a forceful advocate for those with autism and a family of dyslexics and visual thinkers in Britain that includes four winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. He also discusses persistent controversies and the unfolding science. This is an inspiring book that not only documents the achievements of people with various learning differences, but reveals their great potential -- especially in a new digital age where traditional clerical and academic skills are less and less important while an ability to think in pictures and to understand patterns using high-level computer information visualizations is rapidly increasing in value in the global economic marketplace.

Thomas G. West is the author of the award-winning book In the Mind’s Eye: Creative Visual Thinkers, Gifted Dyslexics and the Rise of Visual Technologies, which was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice magazine, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries division of the American Library Association. He is also the author of Thinking like Einstein: Returning to Our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolution in Computer Information Visualization. West lectures worldwide and has given presentations to such institutions as the Dyslexia Association of Singapore, the Confederation of British Industry, the Netherlands Design Institute, the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, the Aspen Institute in Colorado, Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California, and the NASA Ames Research Center.