Musicophilia

Tales of Music and the Brain
Revised and Expanded Edition
by Oliver Sacks

With the same compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, neuroscientist Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the human brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments,” which range from a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two to people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans.

“ 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

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