Musicophilia [Kindle Edition]

Oliver Sacks (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Powerful and compassionate. . . . A book that not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings, and misfirings, of the human mind.” —The New York Times“Curious, cultured, caring. . . . Musicophilia allows readers to join Sacks where he is most alive, amid melodies and with his patients.” —The Washington Post Book World“Sacks has an expert bedside manner: informed but humble, self-questioning, literary without being self-conscious.”—Los Angeles Times“Sacks spins one fascinating tale after another to show what happens when music and the brain mix it up.” —Newsweek“Sacks once again examines the many mysteries of a fascinating subject.” —The Seattle Times


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Description

Revised and Expanded

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.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 375 KB
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (September 23, 2008)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000W939JI
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,682 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Psychology & Counseling > Creativity & Genius
  • #51 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Psychology & Counseling > Psychotherapy, TA & NLP
  • #59 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Psychology & Counseling > Neuropsychology

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the Love of Music, May 31, 2011

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Musicophilia (Kindle Edition)

Oliver Sacks is one of the best popularizers and expositors of science around. I have read several of his books, and have each time learned remarkable new things about the human mind. His writing is very literary, and he often makes you take a new look at the ordinary everyday mental abilities and traits.

Appreciation and creation of music is one such human activity that most of us take for granted. Almost everyone appreciates music at some level, so music seems like one of the most fundamental of our instincts. However, if we just stop to think about music for a moment, we realize that it is a very peculiar thing to spend so much of our time and effort on. Music is the most abstract of all of the arts, and it is puzzling that we are so intrinsically drawn to it.

In "Musicophilia" Oliver Sacks brings his own expertise in neurology, as well as his keen amateur appreciation of music, to try to shed some light on our musical proclivities. The first part of the book centers on several case studies of people who had experienced major traumas to the parts of their brains. The damages that they suffered caused them to have some aspect of their musical experiences dramatically altered. Some have had persistent musical hallucinations, while other perceived musical pitches differently from the rest of us. These case studies, just like in the other of Sacks's books, serve to illustrate the deep underlying neurological basis of our musical aptitudes. The latter parts of the book deal with more general musical impairments, such as physical injuries that many musicians undergo, and the way that people cognitively respond to such situations.

One of the things that I always appreciated about Sacks's books is his writing style. It is much more literary than most other popular science books. It is also imbued with warmth and general sense of compassion for many of his patients and other people whose case histories he describes. Despite his keen analytical insights, one never gets the sense that he wants to reduce our human identity to just the neurological phenomena. It is a delicate balancing act, and Sacks manages to achieve it with utmost virtuosity.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read...., April 6, 2011

By 

T. Russell (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Musicophilia (Kindle Edition)

...but a little long-winded. I kept hoping for more clearly drawn conclusions, but the author just kept on bringing up more and more examples of patients with specific problems. While the examples are interesting, I found the book to be a little too example-heavy -- and I wanted more in the way of conclusions about what these cases proved to him -- and the rest of us. A very interesting book overall, but it was less insightful than I hoped into the true power that music has and the role it can play in our lives.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Musicophillia, May 29, 2009

By 

Margaret McNicholl (Santa Clarita, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Musicophilia (Kindle Edition)

I loved this book. It gives multiple examples of an area that is not generally covered in neuropsychology. It provides multiple examples of various types of neurological disorder having to do with music. If you've ever experienced musical hallucinations, a deterioration in he appreciation of music or any of the other conditions noted it will help with diagnostic clarification. Since I do evaluations of people I find it a handy reference.