Foreword : why I is an other -- Metaphor and thought : all shook up -- Metaphor and etymology : language is fossil poetry -- Metaphor and money : how high can a dead cat bounce? -- Metaphor and the mind : imagining an apple in someone's eye -- Metaphor and advertising : imaginary gardens with real toads in them -- Metaphor and the brain : bright sneezes and loud sunlight -- Metaphor and the body : anger is a heated fluid in a container -- Metaphor and politics : freedom fries and liberty cabbage -- Metaphor and pleasure : experience is a comb that nature gives to bald men -- Metaphor and children : how should one refer to the sky? -- Metaphor and science : the earth is like a rice pudding -- Metaphor and parables and proverbs : mighty darn good lies -- Metaphor and innovation : make it strange -- Metaphor and psychology : a little splash of color from my mother -- Backword : the logic of metaphor.

Takes readers from Aristotle's investigation of metaphor right up to the neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. This title explores how a life without metaphor, as experienced by some people with autism spectrum disorders, significantly changes the way a person interacts with the world.

Originally published: New York : Harper, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-289) and index.