he Oasis Guide to Asperger Syndrome: Advice, Support, Insights and Inspiration," by Patricia Romanowski Bashe and Barbara L. Kirby. Crown Publishers, $27.50.

As recently as a decade ago, this was a fairly typical set of responses to a child with the odd constellation of behaviors caused by Asperger syndrome, a neurological disorder:

The preschool teacher, noting the boy's refusal to sit in a circle and his obsession with electrical outlets and switches, suggested there might be learning problems.

The pediatric neurologist said he had attention deficit disorder. A psychologist thought he needed behavior modification.

The psychiatrist hired by the local school system thought he was autistic and darkly suggested that he might be better off in an institution.

And the parents — my wife and I — felt bewildered, frightened and alone.

If only we'd had this book. While hardly the first to deal with Asperger's — a disorder so widely chronicled in recent years that it threatens to become a fad diagnosis — it is surely one of the best.

Asperger syndrome is thought to be a form of autism. Though it was first identified in 1944, few Americans had even heard of it until 50 years later, when it was finally listed in the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual — a surprising time lag, considering that experts now think it occurs in 1 out of 250 to 500 people, or at least half a million Americans.

The authors of this book are not specialists, except in the sense that my wife and I are: each has a son with Asperger's, which strikes boys at a rate 4 to 10 times as high as the rate in girls. But with prodigious research and the help of their six-year-old Web site for parents, Oasis (for Online Asperger Syndrome Information and Support, at www.aspergersyndrome.org), they have assembled a remarkable amount of information and presented it in such a levelheaded, clear-eyed manner that their guide could be a model for any self- help book.

Asperger's is characterized by social awkwardness, extreme literal-mindedness and, most conspicuous, a pedantic, talky fixation on arcane topics — Pokémon, dinosaurs, train schedules — often to the exclusion of nearly everything else. It was this trait that led Hans Asperger, the Viennese psychiatrist who first identified the disorder, to call it "little professor" syndrome. On paper, it sounds harmless, quirky, even vaguely charming.

But the "Oasis Guide" is admirably free of sugarcoating and inspirational cant. In response to those who call Asperger's a mild form of autism, they quote a mother who tartly points out, "My son doesn't have mild anything." As they write, in perhaps the book's most crucial sentence, "It is important to remember that Asperger syndrome is a serious, lifelong disability that requires individualized expert intervention and should be treated as such."

With help, children with the syndrome can grow into successful adults, though there are few if any studies to indicate how many do so. The book is very good on what interventions are available and how parents can go about finding them. It devotes chapters to medications, which cannot cure Asperger's but may be effective against related disorders, like attention deficit and depression; dealing with school authorities, who are required by federal law to provide appropriate services to every child with disabilities; and teaching social skills — which, as the authors point out, are the best predictors of success as an adult.

Among other things, the book is testimony to the power of the Internet to organize isolated, information-starved people into a community. The Oasis Web site has had more than a million visits, and much of the good advice in the guide comes from the parents — and adults with Asperger syndrome, who proudly call themselves Aspies — who flock to its message boards to tell their stories about schools, doctors, drugs and encounters with the "neurotypical" world.

Ultimately, these stories are not discouraging but reassuring, for they make clear that no Asperger's parent is alone. Every child is different. But every infuriating misdiagnosis, every uncaring (or caring) school official, every setback, every gain finds an echo in the experiences of the hundreds of people whose contributions make this book such a rich and human document. "When the shock wears off, and it will," a parent writes about first receiving the Asperger's diagnosis, "you will realize that this is the same child you have nurtured and loved since birth."