Shouting Won't Help: Why I—and 50 Million Other Americans—Can't Hear You

by Katherine Bouton

For twenty-two years, Katherine Bouton had a secret that grew harder to keep every day. An editor at The New York Times, at daily editorial meetings she couldn't hear what her colleagues were saying. She had gone profoundly deaf in her left ear; her right was getting worse. As she once put it, she was "the kind of person who might have used an ear trumpet in the nineteenth century."
Audiologists agree that we're experiencing a national epidemic of hearing impairment. At present, 50 million Americans suffer some degree of hearing loss—17 percent of the population. And hearing loss is not exclusively a product of growing old. The usual onset is between the ages of nineteen and forty-four, and in many cases the cause is unknown.
Shouting Won't Help is a deftly written, deeply felt look at a widespread and misunderstood phenomenon. In the style of Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, and using her experience as a guide, Bouton examines the problem personally, psychologically, and physiologically. She speaks with doctors, audiologists, and neurobiologists, and with a variety of people afflicted with midlife hearing loss, braiding their stories with her own to illuminate the startling effects of the condition.
The result is a surprisingly engaging account of what it's like to live with an invisible disability—and a robust prescription for our nation's increasing problem with deafness.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Disability, Science, Medical, Autobiography, Health

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Katherine Bouton was an editor at The New York Times for 22 years before her progressive hearing loss made it too difficult to continue to work in a newsroom.
Confronted with involuntary early retirement, she returned to her first love and earlier career, writing. The result was her book "Shouting Won't Help: Why I -- and 50 Million Other Americans -- Can't Hear You," published to critical acclaim and a great deal of media interest in February 2013.
Hearing loss is a hidden disability and one that people are reluctant to acknowledge. Her book prompted many to open up about their own hearing loss.
She is a frequent speaker at hearing loss organizations, talking about the arc of her own hearing loss experience: from despair and anger to acceptance. The journey was not an easy one, but her eventual success allowed her to begin a whole new phase of life as a writer as well as an advocate for those with hearing loss and other hidden disabilities.
She has also been invited to talk to university neurobiology departments about her first person experience of learning to hear again with a cochlear implant. She speaks from a consumer perspective about the hearing loss industry and her experiences with hearing aids and cochlear implants. She has been invited to several international conferences on hearing loss, which is a global problem costing billions of dollars in unemployment and health care costs.
Katherine's early writing appeared in The New Yorker (where she was a staff member), in The New York Times Magazine (where she was later deputy editor for 10 years), the New York Times Book review, and many other publications.
She is a graduate of Vassar College and has taught in various writing and journalism programs.
She is married to the writer Daniel Menaker and they have two grown children: William Menaker, an assistant editor at Liverwright Publishers, and Elizabeth Menaker, a clinical social worker.
She is at work on a practical guide to living with hearing loss, to be published by Workman in the summer of 2015.
She continues to contribute reviews and essays to The New York Times.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am hard of hearing. I have been wearing hearing aids since I was 12 so for most of my life I have had an invisible disability. I have constant noise going on in my head and when the author describes to how loud silence can be, she hit the nail on the head of descriptions.
I am younger than the author and have lived with this for most of my life so I can see how some may think she is over fussy about her hearing loss because she used to have good hearing and she just wants it back that way. Which will never really happen unless science can get it together and come up with something.
She did describe that cost and vanity is a huge factor about people who have a problem getting the help they need with hearing loss and also how it could be changed. When people find out I am hard of hearing, it helps so that they understand that I am not being standoffish, I just can't hear what is being said. Btw I am not ashamed about my aids. They are bright red and I have very short hair so people can see them. I want them to see them and ask questions. Educating the masses I always say.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bouton writes well about her own hearing loss over many years and the physical and mental distress it caused her, though not as strikingly to me as British music journalist Nick Coleman, whose visceral writing conveys his passionate feelings of loss and physical pain while going deaf (in The Train in the Night and in the final chapter of his new book, Voices) .

I learned a lot about hearing aids and cochlear implants, and Bouton gives a broad historical and research-based survey of the condition of hearing impairment and the world of late-deafened/hearing-impaired adults. (The Deaf community would dislike this book if only because she views hearing impairment of any sort as a terrible disability, including those who are born deaf.)

The downsides: Bouton’s self-pity and sense of privilege were a little hard to take, and her personal reminiscences sometimes didn’t fit into the larger narrative, rambling away into self-indulgence (if she wants to write a little memoir about her days at the New Yorker and the NYT Magazine that’s fine, but why go into great detail about Broadway and the reasons behind Jeremy Piven’s surprise visit to the Times offices to give an scoop interview, if the point is just that you couldn’t hear him?). But she's always interesting to read.

I have idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss in one ear, diagnosed as “moderate” (50 db), and although I qualify for a hearing aid I haven't considered getting one (because it’s expensive and I don’t think I need it, not because I’d be ashamed to wear one, as Bouton was). But I didn’t know until reading this that with every year that goes by the neural pathways that were formerly used for those high frequency sounds (now broadcasting tinnitus) are losing their adaptation to differentiating sounds and language – so that if I were to lose all hearing one day and wanted an implant I could face failure in retraining my brain to differentiate those frequencies. (This is why, I learned, late-deafened adults are less successful with implants than pre-verbal children, and why if I were a child (learning language) the hearing aid would not be optional.)

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

To quote the New Yorker summary: "Bouton's personal narrative, which offers essential insight into the subtle but crippling ways that this 'hidden disability, one often borne in secret', can upend relationships and threaten professional goals".

As the daughter of a mother with age-onset hearing issues, watching her struggle adapting to hearing aids that often need adjustments, tinnitus, dizziness and the other challenges accompanying hearing loss, as well as the grandmother of a two-year-old born premature and deaf (but now with cochlear implants learning both sign language and speech recognition), this book was extremely relevant. I found it full of useful information plus moving narratives, moments of optimism, moments of sorrow, and its excellent collection of first-person stories that reflect all the stages in-between. For anyone in a similar situation (experiencing hearing loss) or with family and/or friends who are either going deaf, born deaf, or even wanting to avoid going deaf, read this book and share it. It has already changed my behaviour with family friends and hopefully will help me cope better one day if I should find myself slowly discovering that I am becoming, with age, "hard of hearing". One immediate action was the downloading of an iPhone app to detect environmental noise levels.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who suspects they may be losing some hearing - or know someone who has - should read this. Katherine Bouton denied her hearing loss for years and years - I, on the other hand, did something about it as soon as it happened. She goes into great detail about hearing aids and cochlear implants (though cautions neither of these restores one to "normal" hearing). Research is ongoing but under-funded. Deafness, no matter to what degree, is an invisible disability. She confirms that the ability to hear music properly is gone forever. And offers advice on how one should speak to a hard-of-hearing person - face-to-face, don't put your hand in front of your mouth, look directly at the person. As I have found, I can hear, but can't always make out what is said ... the other day Larry asked me how to spell "final." Me: f-i-n-a-l. L: "No, final" FINALLY understood that he was saying "vinyl." Sounded the same to me! - and I was wearing my hearing aid.
Actual publication date is Feb. 13 - I found a uncorrected review copy online.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

As friends know, here at the age of 50 I've started learning American Sign Language (ASL) for the first time, and am doing a deep dive into the politics and culture of the Deaf community with a capital "D," as a way of compensating for my ever-decreasing hearing and hopefully opening a new avenue for my shrinking social life. (See my review of A Deaf Adult Speaks Out for a long explanation of what exactly "Deaf culture" is, and why it's so important to learn about before getting involved with the community.) This 2013 book, recommended to me by my Goodreads acquaintance Janine, actually covers a subsection of this topic that is rarely talked about -- namely, those who are hard of hearing (and especially those like me who become hard of hearing as adults), who like bisexuals exist in a netherworld between two cultures that each have very distinct identities, neither of which they perfectly fit within.

This is an important thing to understand about the Deaf community, that in many ways it's defined by its members having never been a part of hearing society at all -- it affects the way that people who have been deaf from birth see the world, the way they interact with others in public, the quality and speed of their sign language, the political opinions they hold, the social networks they cultivate. But for someone who was raised in the hearing world and only later loses the ability to navigate within it, the emotional problems are an entirely different thing than people who were born deaf; their entire old life exists in a society they can no longer navigate, but they don't quite fit in with the new society they've transitioned into, not fluent in ASL but with no external signs to let hearing people know that they can no longer hear them properly.

It can be a tough, frustrating situation, as deftly laid out here by New Yorker contributor and former New York Times editor Katherine Bouton, penning a manuscript that is partly a journalistic look at the science and economics behind hearing loss and audiology innovations, and partly a poetic personal memoir about her own experiences in this subject. I have to admit, as someone who's in a similar situation, a lot of it profoundly resonated with me, especially the alienation that comes with hearing people not understanding the difference between pure noise and cognitive interpretation of that noise. (Or in other words, as the book's title indicates, I can hear the sounds your mouth is making with no problem, just that my brain has a hard time converting those sounds into words and sentences, so repeating what you said at shouting level isn't doing either of us any good.)

I'm not giving it a perfect score, because Bouton does have the habit of rambling sometimes (there's a lot here about her career and former lovers in the 1960s and '70s that have nothing to do with hearing loss), plus she's ultimately saying a lot of stuff here I already knew. But as Janine remarked when she recommended it to me, if you have good hearing and ever wanted to understand what it's like to be your hard-of-hearing friend or loved one, this is the perfect volume to pick up, a book that takes both a wide and a narrow look at the subject, and therefore is both factually fascinating and simply a beautiful read. It comes recommended in that spirit.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 and a half stars, really. A highly informative work by an author who walks the walk, as they say. Severely hearing impaired herself, Katherine Bouton tells it like it is in, as she puts it, "the land of the nearly deaf". I found reading the personal-story parts to be both validating and painful. Anyone who does not deal with this issue personally will just never get it, and they should be thanking the heavens every day for that. These are just a few of the things she writes about that I know from first hand experience: people with hearing loss struggle mightily to stay in the hearing world they have always known; it's exhausting to hear; there is a difference between hearing and listening and if you can't hear properly, you can't listen; people will treat you as if you are mentally defective; noise can be painful and music can be torture; it's easier to isolate yourself than try to deal with the everyday things that everyone else takes for granted. Things I learned from this book: The hearing impaired are at a higher risk for heart disease and dementia. Cochlear implants don't always work, or don't work in the same ways for everyone. We are a long way away from any real solution even though the number of people with hearing loss is growing astronomically.

Lots of information about how hearing works, what is being done to find a cure, tinnitus, vertigo, history and research. In fact, it is more technical than I expected. If I had gone into it expecting such detailed research, I would probably have given it four stars. The author definitely did her homework.

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suppose this is a perfectly good, informative book that just isn't what I wanted it to be. When I heard about the book, I imagined--and hoped--that it would be the author's personal narrative of her life with severe hearing loss, with background information about hearing loss interspersed. Instead, Shouting Won't Help is a largely factual account of the causes and preventions of hearing loss, along with possible solutions, etc. While the author gets very specific about her own hearing loss--what she can and can't hear, the different hearing aids and speech therapies she's tried--she doesn't get very personal. There are perhaps two sentences that make passing mention of the vast impact that hearing loss can have on her family and romantic life, but she never takes us into that world. Coming from a family with parents with moderate and severe hearing loss, I've never felt like anyone could understand what our family life was really like, and hoped to find a bit of understanding in this book. In that vein, I also hoped to understand my parents' side of relationship better by reading a narrative from the hard of hearing perspective. This wasn't that book. There is nothing wrong with the book as it stands, but I think it would have been a stronger, more evocative book if it had had a personal narrative element.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really should be required reading for anyone who is or has a loved one who is hard of hearing. Bouton wonderfully describes the journey from sound to silence and the challenges - and frustrations - along the way. It gives voice to those people who are often incorrectly perceived as snobbish or rude when in reality, they just have no idea what you've said or what's going on. While being hard of hearing shares a lot of the same problems faced by deaf people, this invisible disability can also be a whole different world with other frustrations.

[Annmarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine Bouton’s book is both a thoroughly researched survey of the field of midlife hearing loss as well as a moving personal exploration of her own condition.
I felt her pain reading of her decision to cut short her successful career as an editor at the New York Times when the hearing impairment got the better of it all. I had taken early retirement before my hereditary sensorineural loss became apparent.

As Bouton tells it, the process of “acceptance” and adjustment to serious midlife hearing loss is a long and very difficult journey. In a similar fashion to her experience, I disguised my own loss at work for a long time. I had no desire to be labeled “disabled” or rearrange my relationships with colleagues as a professional with special needs (I was too old, it all seemed too hard and I was too proud). From reading Bouton’s accounts this seems to be a common response for people from the hearing world who are now cut adrift from it.

As Bouton highlights in the book, mid life hearing loss is indeed an “invisible” and “hidden” disability. I would much rather be quiet and miss a lot of what’s being said than have a person repeat it to me loudly as if I’ve not been paying attention in class. This is so embarrassing, but I’ve found it’s the most common response from a speaker when you ask them about what they’ve said. How are people to know they need to practice rephrasing what they’ve said or summarise a context to you so you have a better chance of keeping up with a conversation? A big effort on their part. And as Bouton explains, the act of trying to hear and understand what’s going on with your residual hearing and aids can be a bigger effort on your part, taking “tremendous concentration” that produces “cognitive overload”.

I found the sections on assistive technologies particularly relevant. I agree with Bouton’s argument that hearing devices are very costly but that most audiologists are worth their keep. While hearing devices are expensive and under-insured most audiologists provide devices that include extensive backup support, ongoing adjustments and replacements. As the book details, acquiring any assistive audio technology (and that includes hearing aids) requires an awful lot of skill on the part of the provider and an awful lot of adjustment and re-learning on the part of the person with hearing impairment. It’s not a “natural” solution to hearing loss. Ironically, I was a sound-recordist in my younger days, way before the hereditary condition began to manifest and sometimes the array of technology and technique that surrounds the hearing impairment industry reminds me of the complexity of the media field I used to work in. It’s why I have a motivation to persevere with old fashioned “speech reading” (lip-reading), as its technology free.

As well as telling her story, Bouton’s book is laced with fascinating interviews that she conducts with scientists and researchers in the field of hearing loss. It also includes very inspiring interviews with people who’ve accepted their loss and are re-engaging with the world differently but creatively and productively. The recent research Bouton cites, however, on the links between hearing loss and dementia is worrying. The questions it raises about understanding its causes are pressing. It also raises the significant issue of the possible need for national hearing assessments and interventions in various countries.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand what it’s like to lose your hearing in mid-life. It’s also an important book for those with this form of impairment for understanding the current context that impacts on their choices. It will provide a necessary background to the cultural, technical, supportive and not so supportive state of affairs that exists.

[Davy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listen: I'm sorry as hell for what happened Ms. Bouton. I've lived with hearing loss my entire life -- since the tubes came out of my ears when I was a baby -- so I know how frustrating it can be (particularly so because it's an "invisible" disability, as she says). It's hard for people to relate to the routine challenges I face every day, and part of what I was hoping to find in this book was understanding, support, and a sense of community. I got ... a little of that, yes. But most of these pages are devoted to Bouton's own horror story, and though it is filled with calamity, the book often segues into woe-is-me territory and flounders there for much of the duration. To write a book like this is to take on responsibility -- for the topic and for your readers, many of whom live with (or in close proximity to) this affliction. But I feel like Ms. Bouton is too preoccupied with getting her story off her chest and exorcising her own demons to get around to writing something that might be worthwhile for the rest of us.

[Jonah · Rating 3 out of 5]

6 Things I Liked About this Book

1. It offers an imperative: reduce noise!

2. The author puts herself in the book while making the book about more than herself.

3. The author acknowledges that much of her issues with hearing loss were related to what she calls her "vanity"; her intense desire to hide her hearing loss.

4. It's about something that affects a lot of people, and contains a lot of profiles of people with hearing loss.

5. It talks about a cochlear implant that was only slightly successful, in direct contrast to the other three books by implanted people that I've read (Biderman's Wired for Sound, Chorost's Rebuild, Romoff's Hear Again).

6. It has endnotes and sources.

Why I Didn't Rate this Book Higher:

1. As a logical and mathematical person, I found Bouton's simple acceptance of "facts" extremely frustrating. She rounds numbers too often, does not consider implications of studies that might disagree with her conclusions, and doesn't ask the questions that come to my mind. For instance, do hearing aids accelerate the progression of noise related hearing loss?
She also has a poor understanding of auditory integration disorder, and does not even touch upon the huge risk factor for hearing loss that diabetes is.

2. She consistently uses the term "suffering" without meaning suffering. For instance, she says blah blah people suffer from hearing loss when she is talking about how many people have hearing loss. Hearing loss does not equal suffering; if it's not a given that not all of the people with hearing loss are suffering from it, then it ought to be. I find that language usage to be strongly objectionable.

3. Although Bouton acknowledges that her own interest in hiding her hearing loss was the cause of a lot of her problems, she doesn't really seem to see all of the implications of that. Also, that just gets old. I'm tired of reading books about how people hid their disabilities and how it wasn't fun.
I'd be a little more interested if she talked more about why she stopped and how more people can be encouraged to stop hiding.

4. Bouton gives lip service to the idea of being Deaf- she says the community is vibrant- but she doesn't mean it. She writes about the Deaf child with hearing parents as unable to be fully in the Deaf world, and she writes as though mainstreaming meant that Deaf kids weren't in Deaf classrooms, when in fact mainstreaming very often just means that the Deaf kids are in the same building as hearing kids (I was in a main program in an elementary school with Deaf kids).
Bouton never explores the idea of learning sign herself.

[Allyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more but the whining about her vanity and how it got in the way of accepting her hearing loss and wearing both hearing aids and working to improve her status after her cochlear implant was just too annoying. I understand the concept of denial, especially with hearing loss but I was disinterested in lengthy examination of her denial. While she explored and presented interesting theories and targeted therapies for hearing restoration, I was unable to appreciate the full extent of her book due to irritation over her behavior. Had she presented in a different fashion, I might have perceived her disability differently, but I was left with no sympathy, empathy, or interest really in her plight. Sad but true. And I am not even sure if I were hearing afflicted or loved someone with hearing loss, would I suggest the reading of this book.
A cool cover, and title.

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lived this experience (the losing of much of the hearing in one ear, along with the tinnitus & a touch of vertigo) for a short time a few years back for apparently no better cause than "shifting of the cerebral arteries" - yes, that's apparently a thing. Mega-steroids provided the fix, but I'm haunted by what I nearly lost. Bouton reacted in much the same way I did - and since most of her hearing is permanently gone, she lives with it, in not always the most well-adjusted way. Do go read this for a look at the life that many people must live.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of information that seems new. Just a great read

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am actually in the middle of reading this book for the second time in preparation for a Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) meeting during which it will be discussed.

The author is a former editor of the New York Times, and she relates her decades-long journey from hiding her hearing loss from her friends and colleagues to being forced to acknowledge it, beginning to accept the need for hearing aids, to openly acknowledging her deafness and becoming active in the HLAA.

The book is full of useful information on the physiology of hearing loss, the distinctions between various types of loss, and the benefits and challenges of hearing aids. This includes, among other things, determining (primarily through trial and error) the correct device and fit for each individual, the difficulty of learning how to use the device, and so on.

More importantly for me, Bouton addresses the emotional aspects of hearing loss: isolation, shame, grief, frustration, exhaustion, depression, and anger associated with losing one's hearing. I had felt most of these emotions already, but reading the book enabled me to recognize and acknowledge them, in many cases for the first time. It was emotionally wrenching to read and frequently reduced me to tears.

She also addresses the common perception that hearing loss is restricted to the elderly and thus a sign of 'getting old' and thereby being less valued by society and the workplace. In many cases this leads to denial (both to others and to oneself) and reluctance to use hearing aids. The author herself was forced out of her job because of the difficulties caused both by her deafness and her attempts to hide it. She emphasizes that many hearing-impaired people begin losing their hearing early in life and that preventable hearing loss among young people is increasingly alarmingly.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is hearing-impaired, both those who are just beginning to lose their hearing or those who have been so for years. I have been profoundly deaf in one ear since the age of fifteen, yet this book was incredibly valuable. I would also recommend it to friends and families of hearing-impaired individuals as a means of understanding and empathizing with the difficulties of having mild to severe hearing loss.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be an excellent book relevant to anyone with acquired hearing loss. The author is a former editor of the NY Times who has suffered profound hearing loss partially mitigated by a cochlear implant in one ear and a hearing aid in the other. Like any well written, in-depth report, she combines some of her own and other's stories with good research on the causes, consequences and various approaches to dealing with acquired hearing loss.

I was particularly struck by her description of how those with hearing loss can become marginalized: "After a while, as your hearing loss worsens and you've made one blunder after another, your become wary, reluctant to take chances in conversation. Your confidence is undermined. You may express a bold and even controversial idea if you're the original speaker, but once the conversation turns into a discussion, with questions, challenges, new ideas and thought, you shrink back, hoping no one will notice." (p.110) This has been my life for some time now and, in some situations which I try avoid, my hearing loss is a distinct disability.

"People who lose their hearing are afraid to be open about it because they fear the reaction-the prejudice, fear of seeming old or stupid. But what really makes you seem old or stupid, I know now, is not acknowledging the handicap. You ask the wrong questions or give the wrong answers; you seem vacant, not paying attention, maybe drunk, maybe senile. You can't be a 'team player'..." (p. 180).

I found very useful information about cochlear implants and the critical importance of post surgery auditory rehabilitation for success. The second last chapter provides a very readable summary of new research directions in treating hearing loss including stem cells, though these are at least two decades away.

This is a very useful book for anyone with acquired hearing loss (about 17% of the population in US and rising) or those who live or work with them.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to a former coworker by her friend who is deaf and that person suggested that I read it since she found it helpful. I have to say that the information on pages 10 and 11 should be read by anyone who might be dealing with people with hearing loss. Since there are more than 50 million Americans who are hard of hearing, we all need Bouton's ten tips. I plan to pass that information on to anyone who will listen.

Most of the rest of the book is also interesting and useful. I had just read another book that briefly mentioned cochlear implants and Bouton gives a great explanation of them and how they work. Getting caught up on how researchers are fighting deafness is important to me since I do have some trouble hearing. Also I found the Voices sections where Bouton interviewed other victims of hearing loss fascinating.

Given all that, I would usually give this type of book four stars. However, I had some trouble reading Bouton's comments about herself. I know that many of us prefer to keep our disabilities to ourselves. It might be that if I had lost my hearing early in life that I would have reacted as the author had. Unfortunately, I found Bouton's excuses for hiding her deafness to be disingenuous. I am probably judging her too harshly, but I wanted to shake her. Why would someone avoid letting so many people know they have a problem?

So I am recommending the information in this book to everyone. At least read Bouton's tips in the introduction. Given that hearing loss is a major problem in our world, I believe folks should read the whole book. Hopefully, my reaction to Bouton is atypical.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a 3.5.

I had mixed feelings about this book. Sometimes I didn't like it, and wanted to throw it across the room. Other times, I felt complacent, and enjoyed the depth of Bouton's research and related to her own mixed feelings about her hearing loss.

What I didn't like were some of the generalizations she made about d/Deaf people, including one memorable part when she seemed to imply that people with progressive hearing loss were more miserable than those who had been deaf their entire life. She made several generalizations of this ilk, and even in the beginning of the book, implied that deaf people are miserable to be around - as if it was our fault we are miserable (I chalk our miserable-ness up to society's lack of acceptance, not us). She also believes that hearing impaired is the more accepted term and it's incorrect for her to call herself deaf, which is something I dispute.

Still though - an interesting read with much research, facts, and statistics done on noise, sound, the science of hearing, and chapters that focus on hearing aids, cochlear implants, and other assistive devices. I absolutely loved the "Voices" at the end of each chapter, where she talks to fellow deaf people about their experiences with their loss and how it affected their lives.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was born deaf in one ear, and I found this book fascinating, relatable, and frustrating. I appreciated and learned a lot from Bouton's look into the epidemiology and etiologies of hearing loss - and our serious lack of understanding thereof - and developments in assistive technology.

Throughout the book, Bouton describes everyday challenges for those with hearing loss, often with a palpable sense of anger. I recognized similar situations and coping mechanisms from my own life (adventures in lipreading!), but I had a hard time relating to the feelings attached. Bouton's prolonged refusal to acknowledge her hearing loss at work, efforts to hide hearing aids, and worries about how others would perceive her were painful to read about and difficult for me to comprehend, but maybe that's a difference between early and late onset hearing loss - things that are just life for me (like never ever understanding an announcement on the train) were new, unwelcome burdens for the author. Acceptance is a major theme of the book, but I had a better time reading about chicken ears.

[Fr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I had a hard time warming to the personal stories of the author that form the bulk of the book. About the best I can do is to say that she strikes me as rather fussy, and leave it at that.

On the other hand, I am one of the 80% of Cisplatin recipients who got hearing damage out of the deal. Mine is fairly mild, apparently--I have fairly constant ringing in the ears and have trouble with conversations in noisy places or when I'm taken by surprise. (I'm not complaining. The Cisplatin probably saved my life.) And of course I have plenty of people in my life (like everyone else) whose hearing is damaged. The book is helpful in learning how to deal with myself and deal with others who are hard of hearing.

It wasn't a waste of my time or money, but I wasn't thrilled either. I ending up skimming the last few chapters. YMMV.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was hoping for more out of this book. Great cover. But the answer to the question of WHY {she} and 50 million other Americans Can't Hear You was: nobody can tell for certain. Sure, it described in more detail than I cared to know about (first) her denial of and attempts to hide her increasing loss and then (next) her many failures to adequately fix the problem.

What I appreciate more now that I have finished it (forced myself, it was a bit of a slog!) is having learned how to recognize people who are coping with hearing loss, and how better to communicate with them. Also, it makes me question how much hearing loss I might have and whether I am also not recognizing that about myself. (Note to self, get hearing test.)

It's clear that the author did a whole lot of research. It just didn't translate well to me.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book from the hearing-impaired perspective. Having a severely deaf 85-year-old mom, I've been researching what might help her, where to look for information and all things related to deafness. Reading about the author's early history of moderate deafness as she becomes progressively more hearing deprived, you can't help but pick up on her frustration, the sadness of losing the sounds of daily life, and her struggle to maintain her professional career. The topic seems to have been thoroughly researched and provided much more detail than I need but others will truly find useful. I think those of us who are part of the baby boomer generation, particularly the later years, will appreciate Ms. Bouton's comments and research into this timely topic.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what led me to read this book(I'm not deaf/hard of hearing/etc.), but I'm glad I did. It was very informative, often amusing, but sometimes a little too deep into the anatomy of the subject. When it got too deep, I skimmed, but I actually read most of it. I was really surprised to find that deafness is not silence and at some of the potential side-effects.

I was horrified to find how expensive treatments are and that insurance covers very little. I'm old enought that probably I won't be terrifically affected negatively, but something really needs to be done to help all the people who are affected!

[Selena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was fascinating because I know so little about the "side effects" of hearing loss and I learned more about Ménière's disease and other issues I never knew about. However, the author's refusal to acknowledge here hearing loss or use available accommodations - not to mention the rather terrifying stories of doctors and surgeons doing likewise - was irritating to say the least.

But the other parts, about how a cochlear implant is done was very informative.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suffering from what I call mild hearing loss, this book was a must read for me. Hearing loss is a, pardon the pun, silent and invisible malady. Bouton makes her case for those of us with loss to be verbal about our deficiency and to forget vanity and attempt hearing aids. She also presents current research on hearing loss and compelling first person stories of those living with loss.

[Sally Ember · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent info and great for starting/continuing conversations with family/friends about my and others' hearing/losses. Something for everyone (personal anecdotes and others' experiences; research, resources and references; costs and comparisons; future indications).

Thanks, Katherine Bouton!

[Nerak · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting but much too long. Good editing would have made it into a good New Yorker article.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book because she finally said things that I had thought but not found others talking about regarding hearing loss. One of my favorite parts on page 74 “…. many people don’t know I’m hearing impaired. Instead, they think I’m arrogant or remote, absentminded or distracted, drunk or just plain stupid. Even when I do understand what is being said, the effort of trying to hear eclipses my ability to think. My brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left over to dig into the storerooms of memory for a response. Nor does it have the processing power to tuck away new information- like someone’s name.” I have felt that deeply lately and tried to describe it but to have her say it, was validating. There are other parts of the book that I skimmed ( vertigo doesn’t really apply to me and I wasn’t all that interested in some of the future hopes with science). There are also parts of the book where she lost my trust as a source for truthful or logical thinking as she took some major leaps and connected some dots that had no business being connected. Regardless of what you, the reader, may think or feel about the Bible, she tried to use half of a verse that mentions hearing loss as one of a number of other symptoms to say the “New Testament has long been problematic for the deaf.” When it definitely hasn’t. She then used a crazy pastor as an example, someone who clearly had emotional and cult like practices to affirm her point. It was the kind of thing where you can make anything true if you pull things out of context and find the odd man to agree with you and was a seriously unnecessary rabbit trail… But, it was one of the few books that actually addressed some of the mental, emotional and honest aspects of hearing loss. I felt she was more honest about there not being cures but just helps and those helps really can only do certain things. I enjoyed it. I will recommend it to others.

[Elle Mill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me make sense of my life. When I was about 6 or 7, I woke up with sudden hearing loss. I distinctly remember lying in bed thinking that someone had stuffed cotton in my left ear. Soon after that the tinnitus started and has never stopped. I remember the doctor diagnosing me with hearing loss. There was nothing to be done, he said. Hey, you still have one good ear! Turn up music if the ringing bothers you.

So, I just lived with it for 34 years, forgetting about it consciously. It was just something I lived with. There's nothing to be done. Why mention it to anyone except when they got irritated that I couldn't understand them? I cannot hear more than the occasional words here or there in loud and/or open environments like bars, restaurants, music halls. Hearing is difficult when more than one person talks at a time or if there is any amount of background noise. As a result, I avoided many social situations because I was self conscious and afflicted with social anxiety. I felt embarrassment over miscommunications, and stayed quiet. I got my hearing retested this summer and was immediately prescribed hearing aids. The audiologist said any child with my loss would today be fitted for aids, no question. It's sobering news.

Katherine Bouton's book came into to my life at just the right time. It helped me understand some of the more confusing aspects of living with hearing loss and helped me readjust my expectations for wearing hearing aids. I now understand that there are so many people out there with hearing loss, including younger people like me. Shame and embarrassment over it no longer make any sense to me.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shouting Will Not Help; Why I and 50 Million Other Americans Cannot Hear You is Katherine Bouton's account of how her life changed dramatically when one day in 1978 she had no hearing in her left ear. Unable to hear in the phone from that ear, she tried the right ear and could hear. Later in that day she was dizzy and the left ear was cracking. From that point on there was a gradual loss that eventually affected both ears. She describes the emotional disconnect from others and a denial of the loss. The world of the hearing impaired is vividly described by the author who approaches the topic from how hearing loss impacts relationships, the toll taken from minimally types of hearing devices and cochlear implants. Katherine Bouton also discusses dealing with doctors, and specialists in types of hearing loss. There is also a chapter about dealing with insurance providers including Medicare, all while attempting to mask the great change in her life. Katherine Bouton's six steps for those who have a relative or friend with hearing loss include: Look at the other person who you talk, Consider Your Location, Make Sure you have their full attention, and recognizing that Shouting Will Not Help. A moving and instructive account about a hidden disability that affects many, this is a must read for all.