Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks

Sep 2008 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • 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.

“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

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.

Ratings and reviews

This is a book about the music and its relationship with our brains: why sometimes a melody plays again an again into our minds till drive us near crazy? How does musical inspiration happens? It has some quite interesting stories about people that became more music aware and even music talented after having some kind of neurological accident. It talks about a 90 year-old lady that suddenly started to hear the radio music she was exposed to when she was 6 years old. It tells a lot of interesting stories of funny tricks that the brain plays to these people.

When it comes to music, no other book combs through the neuroscience behind it. What makes music so special and unique to humans (at least to the level we engage in it) is explained in great detail and a plethora of examples by Mr. Sacks in this wonderful, must-read book.

I once got into an off Broadway Oliver as a child but declined and my mom who took me used to work for Saks fifth avenue. Sacks!

About the author

Oliver Sacks was a physician, writer, and professor of neurology. Born in London in 1933, he moved to New York City in 1965, where he launched his medical career and began writing case studies of his patients. Called the “poet laureate of medicine” by The New York Times, Sacks is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Awakenings, which inspired an Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter. He was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2008 for services to medicine. He died in 2015.


www.oliversacks.com