Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain [Hardcover]

"Oliver Sacks is that rare creature, a respected man of science who is also a mean storyteller."
--"Toronto Star"

"From the Hardcover edition."

'These are among the most effective and beautifully written human narratives since Sigmund Freud's case studies.'

'fascinating.'

'A thought-provoking opus...Sacks takes us on a remarkable journey.'

'Rich and informative...so well written, so interesting and so engaging.'

'Lyrical and fascinating...the stories he tells are extraordinary'

'musicophilia is a thorough and fascinating examination of just how this particular art form works on all of us'

'His eminently readable study puts music of all kinds into an enlightening new context'

'Sacks delights in sharing his consulting room secrets to illuminate the mysterious workings of the brain'

'Sacks is above all a clinician, and writes with a compassion that has almost entirely disappeared from medical literature'

An illuminating book about the power of music, from the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Oliver Sacks has been hailed by the New York Times as ‘one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century’. In this eagerly awaited new book, the subject of his uniquely literate scrutiny is music: our relationship with it, our facility for it, and what this most universal of passions says about us. In chapters examining savants and synaesthetics, depressives and musical dreamers, Sacks succeeds not only in articulating the musical experience but in locating it in the human brain. He shows that music is not simply about sound, but also movement, visualization, and silence. He follows the experiences of patients suddenly drawn to or suddenly divorced from music. And in so doing he shows, as only he can, both the extraordinary spectrum of human expression and the capacity of music to heal. Wise, compassionate and compellingly readable, Musicophilia promises, like all the best writing, to alter our conception of who we are and how we function, to lend a fascinating insight into the mysteries of the mind, and to show us what it is to be human.

Oliver Sacks was educated in London, Oxford, California and New York. He is a professor of clinical neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings.