Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

By Oliver Sacks
RH140B

$14.95
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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Product Details
With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls - musical misalignments. Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with - amusia, to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds-for everything but music. Illuminating, inspiring, and utterly unforgettable, Musicophilia is Oliver Sacks' latest masterpiece. 

Oliver Sacks is the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and many other books, for which he has received numerous awards, including the Hawthornden Prize, a Polk Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in New York City, where he is a practicing neurologist. He recently accepted a new position at Columbia University. 

Publishers Weekly Review - Neurologist and professor Sacks, best known for his books Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, dedicates his latest effort to the relationship between music and unusual brain disorders. Embracing the notion that neurology is an inherently British phenomenon, foreign to the New World, Sacks's book is read by impeccably polished actor Prebble (PW's 2006 Narrator of the Year). As befitting so urbane and smooth a reader, Prebble sounds as if his shirt had just been starched and his lab coat carefully pressed before beginning. With nary a word out of place, Prebble steps onto the stage, playing the good Dr. Sacks for this one-time-only performance. 

Review Bookmarks Magazine - Perhaps, renowned author Oliver Sacks's insight into neurological curiosities gives him a key to reviewers criteria. His nine previous books, including Awakenings (1973) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), have all seen widespread critical and commercial success. And critics agree that Musicophilia is a fine addition to Sacks's oeuvre, even though it differs somewhat from his previous works: instead of focusing exclusively on other people's disorders, Sacks, an amateur pianist, indulges in some self-examination (one reviewer sees a link with his autobiographical Uncle Tungsten), including his own fleeting experience with amusia, a disorder that causes music to sound like sheer clatter. Luckily, it didn't affect his ear for fine prose and provocative storytelling. 

Paperback: 448 pages
Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches