Sounds Wild and Broken

by David George Haskell

An awe-inspiring exploration of the sounds of the living Earth, and the joys and threats of human music, language and noise. 'A symphony, filled with the music of life . . . fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully written.'ELIZABETH KOLBERT, author of The Sixth Extinction'Sounds Wild and Broken affirms Haskell as a laureate for the earth, his finely tuned scientific observations made more potent by his deep love for the wild he hopes to save.' NEW YORK TIMES 'Wonderful . . . a reminder that the narrow aural spectrum on which most of us operate, and the ways in which human life is led, blocks out the planet's great, orchestral richness.' GUARDIAN We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David George Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rainforests shimmering with insect sounds and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution's creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animals and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution.Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth's history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets to show that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, less beautiful. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, act.'Absolutely fascinating.' MARIELLA FROSTRUP, TIMES RADIO'Enlightening and sobering.' JINI REDDY, METRO

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Environment, Music, Animals, Biology

448 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2022

About the author

David George Haskell is a writer and biologist acclaimed for his lyrical explorations of the living world. His most recent book, How Flowers Made our World, explores the creative powers of flowering plants. Haskell is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, in 2012 for The Forest Unseen and in 2022 for Sounds Wild and Broken. His 2017 book, The Songs of Trees won the John Burroughs Medal. Other literary honors include an Award in Literature from American Academy of Arts and Letters, two-time finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, winner of the Acoustical Society of America’s Science Communication Award, the National Academies’ Best Book Award, Iris Book Award, Reed Environmental Writing Award, and National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. Haskell has also written essays and multimedia experiences for The New York Times, Emergence Magazine, and other venues. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Sciences at Emory University. Haskell lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in awe of the scope of this book. It discusses the origin of sounds made by animals out of water and how our inner ear evolved to hear sounds on dry land, the first instruments made by people out of bones (featuring professional musicians, flute carving and cave visiting), the architectural differences of buildings depending on the intended acoustics (many concerts were attended), classical music composition (look up Messiaen in particular) bird song and other animal vocalisations as language and what that means in terms of cognition, how changes in habitat due to deforestation and human activity change the way other animals communicate, the impact that colonialism and racism has on urban planning and noise pollution in cities, the mental health consequences loud and unrelenting background noise in cities has on people and wildlife, the havoc the constant noise from boats wrecks on marine animals... I could keep going.

I've never read a book about sound in the natural world with this depth and breadth. Haskell even tackles heteronormative assumptions in bird song! Absolutely wonderful. I'll definitely re-read this one.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very lovely book and if, like me, you've read and enjoyed many of the authors who blurbed it--Kolbert, Ackerman, Haupt--then this is up your alley. I especially appreciated Haskell's focus on aesthetics as a key to ethical behavior: we are motivated to care and act by beauty. And, while we might have different aesthetic values than the nonhumans with whom we share this earth, we can recognize they also are aesthetic creatures, requiring silence and sound and that our soundscape is a violence upon them.

So--did this book depress me as most environmental writing does? Absolutely! Humans are terrible. Obviously that's not Haskell's fault and glad he dug into this often overlooked area of extinction--the extinction of animal sounds and cultures.

I will say at times the book felt repetitive; I think it could have lost ~50 pages and been just as effective. I also found myself wanting more depth on the power of sound. There are juicy factoids sprinkled throughout--for instance, some songs can warm the skin-- but no follow-up (how!? What kinds?! What the what?). And since most of the science of sound is focused on birds, that's Haskell's focus too, though I'd love to have learned more about dolphin communications, elephants, etc, etc.

So a good book, but one that definitely left me wanting more.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich in things to learn and think about. How amazing is it that our hearing and much else evolved from the motion-giving cilia of early and simple life. How amazing to think about how marks on a page embody sound.
Haskell is wonderful about shaking up perspectives: how what we are able to hear in birdsong for instance depends on our only partial ability to hear and our orientation to listening mainly for what we expect to hear, how it may be that more male birds sing in Europe but it's not the case word-wide, how singing frogs are not necessarily all males, but some are even ambisexual. And just in general the way he challenges our apparent orientation to sight.
There is lots to explore further, like Angelica Negron's innovative and enjoyable music. I was bothered, though, by the way he set her work in opposition to listening to classical music in a concert hall. He does show how you can make a case that the concert hall is elitist and excluding, but that seems like too dichotomous a way of thinking.
The notes show how impressively well-read Haskell is and what a labor of love he has created. His elegant style was a happy reminder of the aural dimension of reading.

[Shae Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has it all!! Descriptive whimsy! Evolutionary history! Thoughtful discussion on urban gentrification, Western science as a tool of oppression, EIA, and how they all relate to sound! This is a seriously responsible piece of science writing for the general public and now my favourite book on the topic of evolution. I will recommend this to everyone I know.

[Jenny Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who grew up immersed in the identity of “musician”, this book was fascinating. I’ve never thought about the way natural soundscapes sculpt my experience in particular with regards to ecological crises and change, even though I’ve thought a great deal about the power of rhythm, pitch, tone, and timbre to communicate something more complex than a system based around verbal signifying. Recommended for anyone interested in nature writers and thinkers (Dillard, Stegner, Berry, Oliver, etc.), and anyone interested in sound and performance.

[D.A. Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm in awe of the connections made in this book and the storytelling that is, in places, poetry. The connections between our ability to hear the world around us and our ethical treatment of it are critical lessons for our time that need to be shared.

[Miguel]

dnf - listened to much of this but just wasn't getting enough into the topic. Not a bad listen; just not one that worked out for me.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and far-ranging in its treatment of the theme and beautifully written

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding work! The author shows us how important sound is in our lives and how sound pollution is destroying marine life as well as causing stress in our lives!

[Sjoerd van Heijst · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the rare books I really couldn’t finish. Was interesting at first but got very repetitive and couldn’t keep my attention to it.

[Curran]

This is such a unique approach to science communication, and I’m here for it — in a certain context. This isn’t the kind of book that most people will sit down and casually read; it is so dense with facts that it reads more like a textbook in some ways. However, it’s structured like a novel, so if you surrender to it, you can end up going down some very interesting sonic rabbit holes. It isn’t succinct, but if you hover above the details and take a bird’s eye view, there is a lot of cool stuff here. I certainly will look at sound differently from here on out.

[Jim Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aesthetic definitions of music then, are biologically pluralistic, unless we make the unsupported and improbable assumption that experiences of beauty are uniquely human.

[Janet Meenehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt a need to take my time with this one.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was stunningly beautiful! Towards the end , more focused on “hearing,” I felt more encapsulated . Some parts were a bit too political for me but some really spoke to me like poetry

[Sophie Pesek · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I thought the topic was a niche one and was confused by this book’s length, but by the end I was truly in awe of the ambitious scope.

A bit of an aside for the author, but this book has some of the best discussions of why indigenous land stewardship is important.

The section on sound’s physical impacts on sea life was so vivid and horrifying. The swim bladders bursting, whales being driven mad and beaching themselves to escape the din, and even more graphic vignettes.

And after zooming in, the author ends the book thinking about how sound first came into being at the origin of the universe? What a ride

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engrossing, worrying & inspiring in equal measure - a wonderful read.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confess, I didn't actually finish this book, which is unusual for me. The first half was really interesting, and had some fascinating ideas. I was a little skeptical of some of the sweeping generalizations based on just a few studies, particularly generalizations about animal voices having evolved to be adapted to different environments. The style was verbose and repetitive, and I could have used some illustrations or diagrams, for example of insect hearing organs. Illustrations might have cut down on the lengthy descriptions. Timelines would have been appreciated. I get that the author was trying to evoke a feeling and an atmosphere, but it doesn't work if it's such a slog to read. I guess I found it a slog because I was trying to remember things. Maybe if you just let the words wash over you it would be easier. I finally decided 2/3 of the way through the book that I didn't really have to finish. Pity. I could have used less description and repetition and then maybe been able to read to the end.

[Jack Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sounds Wild and Broken, Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction
David George Haskell, 2022
For the greater part of Earth’s existence there was sound, vibrating molecules of water and air but no living existent creature was there to hear. About 1.5 billion years ago eukaryotic cells evolved a hairlike member called cilia that extended outward from their central body. This enabled the cell to propel itself but also to sense movement around itself. More than a billion years elapsed until these cells were incorporated within a cartilage like structure within the backbones of fish. Through this structure fish could sense movement around them, facilitating both prey and predator detection. Fast forward another 300 million years and this structure evolved into a spiral like salt water filled organ called the cochlea in the first land vertebrates. Air sound transmission through the jaws of these creatures to the cilia in the cochlea and evolution had finally enabled creatures to hear air bound sound transmission. We humans hear through this same anciently derived cochlea in our inner ear and some further evolutions of fish gills to form our ear drum and inner ear bones. The Larynx and voice box that enables us to make sound are also evolved from fish gills and the cheek and throat muscles which enabled us as mammals to nurse also enable us to form words and music. This book is the story of how this evolutionary miracle of hearing and sound transmission has shaped life through inner and intraspecies communication and how it has enabled the development of cultures in both animal and human realms. It is also a story of how modern human civilization is now endangering the beautifully honed and adapted natural soundscapes of both land and oceans.
Rainforests: The most complex and biodiverse ecosystem on earth; the lungs of the planet. Haskel takes us there to experience the sonic marvels, to listen: “ No one knows exactly how many insect species live in the forests around Tiputini, Ecuador, but the count may be near 100,000, many of which are sound makers. Frogs and birds are better known. Nearly 600 bird species and 140 frog species live here. The same number that inhabits the entire varied terrain on North America are crammed into a space of a few square kilometers. The sonic community is thus crowded and richly variegated. The power and diversity of the rain forest’s animals reveal sound’s communicative power. Every species here is advertising presence, revealing identity. And conveying meaning to distant others without the danger of being seen. At night, darkness conceals. In the day the dense profusion of rain forest foliage is almost as effective as a cloak….. Human music contains complex, divergent, and sometimes discordant narratives but emerges from a narrow generative source, the composer and the proclivities of the human ear. In the rain forest there is no single composer and agreed upon collection of tonal or melodic rules. Many aesthetics and narratives coexist here. Listening in the rain forest is challenging because we hear many stories at once, each expressed with a voice suited to the aesthetics of its own species….
From the rain forest the author takes us to the oceans; the songs of the Humpback whale, the communications and social communications of Sperm Whales and Orcas; then he takes us back to the human realm where he attends a concert of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. As contrasted with the music of the rain forest this a very structured ritual and formal setting but what is the communication going on between Orchestra and audience. Haskell maintains contrary to appearances something very ancient is going on here: the human transmission of emotions through sound. The instruments from which the music emanates have deep historical connections to human culture but also from materials sourced from the forests and marshlands of the world. “From the moment the oboe sounds, forests and wetlands come alive on stage. In this place of high human culture, we are lifted into the joy and beauty partly by the sounds of other beings, our senses immersed in the physicality of plants and animals. When a modern orchestra takes the stage, the air becomes animated with the sounds of vibrating plant and animal parts, the voices of forests and fields reanimated through human art.”
How old is human instrumental music? In the forests of southern Germany there is a cave where in sediments 44,000 years old where possibly the first musical instruments ever created by the hand of man were found. Flutes crafted out of vulture wing bones and mammoth bones are found in a cave with the perfect reverbs and acoustics for flute music; the first concert hall perhaps? “Listen; primate lips blow into shaped bird bones and mammoth tusks. A chimera emerges. Hunters’ breath animates the skeletons of prey. The air vibrates with melodies and timbres from a source previously unknown anywhere on earth: musical instruments.”
In this book Haskel is our guide as he takes us to soundscapes in the world’s oceans and forests to witness sounds, we have never heard, but also to alert us to a crisis of our own making. For most aquatic mammals sound combines all of the senses. Sound is their sight, touch and hearing. It enables them to find prey, communicate and find mates. Sound in water travels many times farther and many times faster than in air. Since the 1950s container ship and oil tanker traffic has exploded tenfold. As these ships transverse the worlds oceans, the sounds of deep throbbing diesel engines and cavitating propellers echo across all the worlds oceans. Oil companies surveying for offshore oil wells send massive explosive soundwaves into the ocean. Submarines send mega sonar beams out to guide them across the depths as well as searching for potential enemies. The oceans of the 1950’s were orders of magnitude quieter than they are now. If there is an acoustic hell it is in today‘s oceans. We have turned the homes of the most acoustically sophisticated and sensitive animals into a bedlam, an inescapable tumult of human sound. Human degradation is not just in the oceans it is also in the rainforests and boreal forests that we have silenced our world. In the rainforests of Brazil and Ecuador millions of acres of forests are cleared each year to make way for monocrops of sugar cane and cattle ranches. What once were sanctuaries of complex acoustic sound are now turned silent. In the jungles of Borneo and Indonesia complex, interlinked and sustainable habitats are raised to make way for palm oil plantations to supply the snack food industry. Ancient and beautiful old growth forests in the Americas raised for timber and pulp, replaced with unsustainable fire prone monocrops.
When we buy imported goods from China, do we realize the damage being done to the ocean’s ecosystems? when we buy chips or sugary drinks do we realize we are participating in the destruction of rain forests? When we fill up our tank with gas do we take the time to contemplate the destruction of offshore oil drilling or the looming catastrophic potential of climate change? Do we take the time to find out where the stuff we buy comes from? As Haskell states: “Because concern follows closely on the heels of empathetic connection, our senses shape our ethics, without sensory connection, we fail to enter into the embodied relationships that are the foundation of ethical deliberation and right action. Users like me. Of paper pulp from pine plantations or timber from Bornean forests never know where our goods come from. I look around at the objects in my house. With the exception of some garden vegetables, the province of everything I own bears no relationship to my body, my senses. This ignorance and isolation not only are the products of globalized trade but are the source of the sensory alienation needed to sustain a destructive economy. With our senses cut off from the information and relationships that root and orient ethics, we are adrift. Ecological despoilation and human injustice can thus continue unrestrained by lived relationship.”
I judge a book by how it changes my perceptions of the world and my place in it, how it takes me to places I never thought of going and exposes me to ideas I never contemplated. This is a book that does all of those things in beautiful and eloquent prose, and I highly recommend. JACK

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's breadth in coverage is a little too much for me because it reaches so far and wide with information about sound. I would have likely benefited from watching this as a documentary or listened to this as an audiobook (would noises be included?) because nonfiction like this is so full of research and deep understanding of the topic. It's from the beginning of time and underwater sound, the sound of bacteria to urban noise to making music. It's all covered.

The premise is understandable, we're drowning out the natural world that's so rich and sensory-driven. I find myself, when doing dull tasks and listening to an audiobook, turning it off because I want that silence. The same when I'm going on walks-- I don't always take an audiobook or music with me because it's beautiful noise- a campfire at night with birds, insects, and wind. I love everything this message Haskell has to share, an important element to environmental conservation.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, sound on Earth was only of stone, water, lightning, and wind.

Sound’s special qualities—unlike light, it passes through barriers; unlike aroma and touch, it carries far—make listening an especially important, joyful, and sometimes heartbreaking practice in this time of crisis.

Fascinating read that expands my experience og walking in the world lately. I love music, I love the sound of streams and rivers and birds, of wind, of rain; it is fascinating to think of all our body parts, our ears are always open and can listen in almost all directions. And so often we don’t listen to what we are hearing. We becomes immune to nature’s music. So like an open heart and an open mind, and eyes wide open, my ears are now more open. It is magic.

Our tremulous vocal folds imparted fugitive meaning to breath. In music and speech, nerves enlist the air as a neurotransmitter, erasing the physical distance between communicating bodies. Ears are omnidirectional and always open.

[We] take this for granted. A planet alive with music and speech. Yet it was not always this way. The wonders of Earth’s living voices are of recent origin. And they are fragile. For more than nine-tenths of its history, Earth lacked any communicative sounds. No creatures sang when the seas first swarmed with animal life or when the oceans’ reefs first rose. The land’s primeval forests contained no calling insects or vertebrate animals. In those days, animals signaled and connected only by catching the eye of another, or through touch and chemicals. Hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution unfolded in communicative silence.

One of the perils of our time, then, is that we can find satisfying beauty in experiences that hide fragmentation, destruction, and incoherence. Evolution has built us in thrall to the power of aesthetic experiences. We cannot escape this, our nature. Nor can we easily escape the industrial structures in which our lives are embedded. But we can try to listen, rooting our aesthetic sense in life’s community. What a delight it is to feel those roots ramify and learn.

We become estranged from both the beauty and brokenness of much of the living world. This destroys the necessary sensory foundation for human ethics… The crises in which we live, then, are not just “environmental,” of the environs, but perceptual. When the most powerful species on Earth ceases to listen to the voices of others, calamity ensues. The vitality of the world depends, in part, on whether we turn our ears back to the living Earth.

Our senses and aesthetics arrive from deep time, made of atoms built from ancient sound waves, animated by tiny hairs on cells, and shaped by the long evolution of animals reaching out to one another in sonic eagerness. These legacies disclose the beauty and brokenness of the present time, giving us sensory foundations for joy, belonging, and action.

About three and a half billion years ago, sunlight found a new path to sound: life. Today all living voices, save for a few rock-eating bacteria, are animated by the sun. In the murmurs of cells and the voices of animals, we hear solar energy refracted into sound. Human language and music are part of this flow. We are acoustic conduits for plant-snared light as it escapes to air.

One of this fossilized swarm bears the earliest known sound-making structure of any animal, a ridge on the wing of an ancient cricket. This fossil is the oldest direct physical evidence of sonic communication. There should be a shrine here. A monument to honor the first known earthly voice…Forebears of the mammals most likely could not hear the insects’ sounds. The eardrum and triplet middle ear bones that deliver high-frequency sounds to our mammalian ears had yet to evolve…The thud of footsteps and the boom of thunder were probably all they could hear.

I can walk for hours in the spruce and fir forests of the Rocky Mountains in summer and hear combinations of the same half dozen bird, two squirrel, and two cicada species. No one knows exactly how many insect species live in the forests around Tiputini, but the count may be near 100 thousand, many of which are sound makers. Frogs and birds are better known. Nearly 600 bird species and 140 frog species live here.

The bird’s notes are all higher-pitched than the great whoosh of the pines and Douglas-firs. When wind hits these forests, the resulting sound is almost all below one or two kilohertz. This is quite different from the sound of wind in other forests. When strong gusts hit oaks and maples, or pass through the canopy of the tropical forest, they evoke hissing noises that extend to much higher frequencies, five or six kilohertz. In the mountains, then, wind is a low roar that can last for hours or days. But in most other forests the wind is less frequent, and when it does come, it is high and sibilant. There’s a human quality to the voice of these conifers. In them, the wind produces sounds in the frequency range of human speech, unlike the higher sighs and rustles of other tree species.

The original homeland of the songbirds is the Australo-Pacific, an area now divided into Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, and eastern Indonesian islands. An ancestral group of birds split into two in this region about fifty-five million years ago. One descendant lineage led to the modern parrots and the other to modern songbirds. Both groups are highly vocal and comprise species with well-developed vocal learning and culture. Combined, these two branches of the bird family tree comprise more than half of the nearly ten thousand living bird species.

[Pam Hurd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding

I love reading Haskell's books. It always make me think about things differently. What things? Seems like everything. A great read. You need to take it slow and easy. Need time to think about what you are learning. Don't go into it with any expectations. Just read it, you'll be amazed at where it will take you.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I'm torn. I really like the subject of this book, but the way it was presented was super dry for me. I think it's due to my inability to get into any sort of nature journal, which this book is a hybrid of.

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted something interesting to listen to while gardening, cleaning, sewing etc.; this one sounded interesting. This book is too scientific for me, so I did not finish it.

[Ian Lea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing, unfocused.

[Chuang · Rating 3 out of 5]

The biological origin part is more interesting than the environmental part.

[A]

This book was too obtuse for me.

[Sarah O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The multitudes of modes, mechanisms and motives for organisms to transmit and recieve sonic signals, from prehistoric cellular creatures to the bugs, bats, elephants and humans today, are astonishing and marvelous! Haskell educates without you noticing. His familiar tone conveys a level of knowledge of the natural world that seems he is telling you anecdotes about his friends and loved ones. His prose is sensitive and surprisingly poetic.
At the start of this book we are introduced to the ideas of "sounds" we have never considered, such waves and vibrations possibly interpretted by single cell organisms, bacterias, and mostly marine microorganisms. When the evolution on one specialized cell, the cilia, WOAH did things begin to branch and spread.
The exploration of those biological ideas, then into ways creatures modified sound, the way sound modified creatures; nevermind the specifically human relationships with auditory expression from speech, to music, to structures, to electronic technology. Like I said suddenly you are a shrimp experiencing the nonstop swoooooosh of the tides, and suddenly you are a human, listening to headphones or basking in the acoustic perfection of Redrock Amphitheater.
Whether your interest lies in biology and evolution or more into music, orchestral swells or bass laden beats this book was an effortless listen which I walked away with a grasp of ideas I had never considered, and yet from now on will consider constantly. I've read some Haskell before and he is a gem, a truly heartfelt warrior of knowledge and protector of natural wonder. He calls others to care and his writing does so with very little persuasion. I didn't think I was going to review this, but just consume it, but I simply couldn't stay quiet about it ;)


"Singing with a guitar is a matter of unifying vocal folds with the vibratory tones of wood; the song is flesh, breath, and forest."

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haskell is our tour-guide on the history of sound on earth. We learn about the first insects who learn to rub their wings together to create a buzz, and how the evolution of flowers caused a huge motivation for the development of auditory communication for winged creatures.

He takes us under water to listen to snapping shrimps, and to remote mountains to discover the geographic differences in bird song. Haskell's writing is beautiful, immerses you in the moment, teaches you to listen and to wonder.

Of course, there's no nature story without a focus on all the ways humanity is causing destruction. It's very hard nowadays to listen without noticing humanity's creations rumbling, hammering, screaming and droning. We're not only destroying animal habitats and causing biodiversity loss, our artificial noises are also invading and actively harming nature. The chapter on the effects of boat traffic and seismic measurement noise in the ocean was particularly eye opening.

A book to savour and to read while immersed in nature and its soundscape.
There was unevenness in some chapters, in the balance of poetics and science. And it could have been a bit shorter, maybe cut the chapter on musical instrument, but all in all very inspiring.
Sound and song is such a weird thing, in its ephemerality.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book. Felt like a guided exploration of sound through all it's dimensions, from it's hugest scopes, as big as trees and the wind, or whales and the seas, to the tiny individual insect sounds that make up the choruses of the millions, lighting up the summer fields. From the ancient evolution of noise, the first beginnings of animal sound, to the modern day. From the peaceful quiet of the forest to the mad clamour of the modern city. And the author was a brilliant tourguide, with the interest of a scientist, but a level of artistry with words that made each subject come alive in your mind and make each sentence a joy to read.

(I especially liked the bit where he talked about how violins use the human skull to receive and amplify their reverberations, and how this is an intimate part of their sound. It made me want to hold the guitar as close as I can to my body when I play. To feel the vibrations of wood and steel carry through my chest, to feel it in my whole being, not only my ears.)

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giving this book 5 stars because of the manner in which this theme was presented and written as well as the absolute importance of this subject in relation to life in our environment and the connection which sound has had for millennia within the development of all animal life including Man.
David George Haskell has written a book which should be standard reading for any student of the Life Sciences' as well as anyone simply interested in knowing more about how much sound has played a role in lifes development.
The fact that we have today altered and continue to alter the soundscape in all aspects of Nature is another shot over the bow warning us that we are not alone on Earth; there are multiple and myriad forms of life which are threatened by our continual sonic disruptions in the oceans, forests and fields worldwide. This problem does not exclude Man. We are affected by this in many ways; stress, depression, hearing etc..
Life in all it forms has used sound to hunt, mate, warn of danger, express contentment, communicate etc. Man has stepped into this world creating a new soundscape which clashes in Nature and is having detrimental effects.
There is however hope that we will begin to realise the importance of our connection to Nature. By learning to understand the sounds which truely surround us at all times.
In the water: fish, whales, shrimp and all manner of sealife. The earth: insects of every type communicating with each other. The forests: Birds, trees, plants, fungus; and on and on.
Haskell presents a valid and powerful argument. Well researched. Clearly written. No explanations bogged down in jargon; just straight to the point. Powerful and insightful. This book is very much worth the read and ponder. It will open your eyes to many new avenues of thought on our relationship to all Life on Earth.