Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition | 
| Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Vintage
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 482
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised & enlarged
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1400033535
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.11
EAN: 9781400033539
ASIN: 1400033535
Publication Date: September 23, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, December 2007: Legendary R&B icon Ray Charles claimed that he was "born with music inside me," and neurologist Oliver Sacks believes Ray may have been right. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain examines the extreme effects of music on the human brain and how lives can be utterly transformed by the simplest of harmonies. With clinical studies covering the tragic (individuals afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody) and triumphant (Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort through music), Sacks provides an erudite look at the notion that humans are truly a "musical species." --Dave Callanan
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 Music and its role in our lives October 24, 2007
L. Nery (Rio de Janeiro, RJ Brasil)
159 out of 170 found this review helpful
It is refreshing to see how a specialist still retains the ability to be marveled by the cases he sees in his office. Too often scientists get so blase over their practice that they miss the finer human aspects of every case. Sacks leads the reader gently by hand, even while using neurological jargon, into amazing stories of patients who live through situation we would not have imagined. And they all involve music and how humans experience it.
I believe this book is a must for musicians, who will probably acquire new understandings regarding the dimensions of their music in relation to their own brains.
Music and Science were never so interesting November 6, 2007
Robert G Yokoyama (Mililani, Hawaii)
120 out of 127 found this review helpful
Dr. Oliver Sacks is a British neurologist with a love of music and science. This book blends music and science together like no book I've ever read. There are some amazing stories here. I love the story of surgeon Tony Cicoria who developed a passion for listening and playing music after he was struck by lightning. The story of British conductor Clive Wearing is amazing too. He developed amnesia after his brain became inflammed. He has the the memory and ability to conduct and sing music, but he can't remember anything else. I also loved the story the research chemist named Salimah. Her shy personality was changed after she suffered a seizure. She suddenly had the desire to listen to music all the time. I also touched by the story of Woody Geist. He suffers from Alzheimers disease, but he still performs in an a cappella singing group. Leon Fleisher is a classical piano player who performed with one hand for many years because of a condition called dystonia which affected his right hand. I learned about a genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome in this book. Kids with Williams Syndrome have difficulty paying attention, but they often possess a love for music. I was entertained and informed by this book so much.
Extraordinary! October 26, 2007
medreader (Philadelphia, PA United States)
67 out of 69 found this review helpful
Musicophilia is an absolutely phenomenal book, and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by music, mysteries of the mind, and the human condition. Sacks covers 29 different topics, ranging from synesthesia, to musical hallucinations, to savants, and beyond. In each chapter, he introduces the topic through cases (his own and famous ones in the literature--neurological and classic fictional literature, that is!), always maintaining a deep engagement with the humanity of the subjects: what is it like for these individuals? how do they describe their talent or illness or condition? Sacks also speculates on the possible neurological bases for these fascinating scenarios. This is a real page-turner, beautifully and clearly written, and it will give readers a new respect for the special place of music in our psychology, as well as a deeper understanding of the range of what it is to be human. 20 stars!
Some beautiful writing, especially in the first few chapters November 14, 2007
Alexandra Ottaway
60 out of 76 found this review helpful
Caveat: Since I just lent my copy to someone else today, this is a little off the top of my head:
Sacks is a neurologist, and that is more evident in later chapters, but the first few shed a whole lot of light,
I think, on the field of psychology and psychiatry: Basically it explores the quesition, "When do hallucinations indicate clinical madness(pre-pc term), or not(Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination)?"
The middle, more strictly neurological chapters make me anxious, I admit. Especially the one about the guy
who lost all short-term memory except how to play music he already knew! He kept saying to his wife, "Well,
here you are!" when she'd been there for hours. If it was all I had, would my own musical canon be enough?
The middle chapters also tell you some little-known stuff I felt I already knew; probably because it rehashed material from his earlier books. Well, fine. OK. The last chapter is not bad on the effectiveness of musical therapy, which has been a "new field" since at least the 80's, a new field where it is tough to find employment. Nice way to wind up. But on the whole, I recommend the first few chapters. I believe it is the finest writing in the book.
An opthamologist I know, who laid the groundwork for Sacks' book on the island of the colorblind, would say he's more of a story-teller than a researcher; but that's no small thing. Freud(The Interpretation of Dreams) was a great storyteller, too.
 Formulaic January 17, 2008
Corn Soup
57 out of 74 found this review helpful
Like much of Oliver Sacks' writing, this book takes on an irritating tone of self-congratulation and navel gazing. It also contains several implausible personal anecdotes in which Sacks claims he himself has experienced some of the cognitive abnormalities of his patients.
I have read that an early criticism of his writing, in which a reviewer noted the cold, clinical attitude that Sacks took towards his subjects, really got under his skin. He has since remedied this flaw with a much worse flaw. That is, after going over the juicy details of whatever neurological anomaly he is studying in a patient, he resorts to a silly formula of waxing rhapsodic about the deep connection that he felt with the patient despite his or her condition, and concludes with some metaphysical speculation about just what it all means. Hmmmmmm. It reeks of forced (perhaps false) sentiment.
Also, the amount of original work that he has done for this book is pitiful. There is a HUGE amount of self-reference in this book, especially to his book "An Anthropologist on Mars". Those who have read that book, or the similar "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" will be rightfully irritated. Even worse than these formulae, though, are the ridiculous grandiose, implausible, and often irrelevant anecdotes from his New York cultural buddies, who are as fascinated by themselves as Sacks is by himself. The chapters on synesthesia are almost unreadable.
There are a few things that save this book from being a total waste, however. His chapter on Williams' Syndrome is nicely written, new, and informative. Some of his personal experiences with Clive Wearing are also interesting, though most of the material has already been covered in the several documentaries made about Wearing.
This is the last book by Oliver Sacks I will read. I know his shtick and I'm sick of it. Unless you are really a fan of Sacks, I would pass it up.
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