Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks examines the role that music plays in the brain and how it impacts people with the same care and knowledge that he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He presents us with a range of what he terms as "musical misalignments" in Musicophilia. 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. Oliver Sacks' most recent masterwork, Musicophilia, is enlightening, uplifting, and completely memorable.