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|  | Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Vintage
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $5.97
as of 11/23/2009 11:12 CST details
You Save: $8.98 (60%)
New (58) Used (35) from $5.97
Seller: dixztr
Rating:  115 reviews
Sales Rank: 1392
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised & enlarged
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1400033535
Dewey Decimal Number: 781
EAN: 9781400033539
ASIN: 1400033535
Publication Date: September 23, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Minor cover wear
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 115
 brilliant book May 24, 2009
music lover
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a brilliant discussion of the neurology of music. It discusses the 'musical brain' and how the brain is connected to musical perception and expression. Oliver Sachs is a wonderful writer. If you have any interest in music, this book will captivate you.
Terrific for musicians May 21, 2009
T. Ervin (tucson az usa)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a retired professional musician (orchestra, professorship, teacher of youngsters, and a jazzer too), I certainly wish I had read this book earlier! Very enlightening. Sachs as usual employs slightly abnormal or above-normal patients to introduce important issues about musical perception, learning, memory, memorization and practice, and more. I have learned so much here! A great gift to anyone in the music business. Might be a bit difficult for a junior reader.
Fascianting tales of music and the brain May 7, 2009
D. Cotterill (Broken Hill NSW Australia)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Only part way thru the book at this point, but it is a fascinating insight into the effects of music on the brain...and the part the brain can play in our individual musical "makeup".
 The power of music! April 27, 2009
Sahra Badou (Tokyo, Japan)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
The brain is a strange machine. It is capable of so many outstanding feats. Yet we sometimes call such feats abnormal. Why? Couldn't it be that we, the ones without the ability to achieve such feats with our brain, are the ones who are abnormal?
Is music wired into us? Is music part of our DNA? This book will attempt to answer those questions. Suffice it to say that music occupies more areas of our brain than language does.
Some ancient cultures viewed music as the work of the devil. Like alcohol, music can intoxicate the soul and lead to sin. If music is truly wired into us, how could it be a sin?
This book explains the science of how music is wired into us. Some people are born with the gift (though we call it abnormal) of identifying different tunes and pitches. For example, some people can tune a piano by just using their ears, and without the use of external apparatus. Some people see music in color, and to them, we are abnormal for being unable to see it like them! Some people hear music that none of us can hear. It is as if they have their own radio station in their head.
Though some people are born with such gifts (they are hypermusical from birth), the majority of people acquire those gifts after a severe trauma or disease. To many, hearing music is a gift. Composers and musicians for example relish this gift. To others, though, constantly hearing music drives them insane. A surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. To people with amusia, music sounds like the clattering of pots and pans. Can science find the switch to turn this internal music on and off?
Researchers are now concentrating on not why some people can hear `internal' music, but why the rest of us can't. Maybe new breakthrough will give us the ability to create new forms of music unheard off till this day! This will be a musicians dream!
Music is irresistible, mysterious, haunting, mesmerizing, and unforgettable, and in `Musicophilia,' Oliver Sacks tells us why.
Quite a Melody April 26, 2009
factoid junkie
Fascinating.
Adept.
Insightful.
The usual I expect from Sacks. The anecdotes were terrific, but I believe he is better at the anecdotal than he is at attempting to describe the larger theme in this book.
It did seem Sacks referred to his personal life at a significantly higher rate than ever. And reading the acknowledges would take a few minutes. He must have thanked several hundred people.
Which leads me to wonder if he isn't feeling this may be his last significant work. That he left his life long love of music so he could exit his writing on a crescendo.
Time will tell.
Showing reviews 11-15 of 115
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