August 25, 2008

Musicophilia

Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Knopf, 2007) “investigates the power of music to move us, to heal and to haunt us.” As Emma Williams notes in her review of this work in The Lancet (vol.371, March 22-28, 2008) Sacks leads the reader through summer camps, concert halls, hospital wards, and a Grateful Dead concert in search of illumination. With its “meditations on self and will, memory and creativity, illness and healing” he provides insight on what it means to be human.

1 comment:

Steve Silberman said...

I'm Steve Silberman, author of Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads and coproducer of the Dead's box set So Many Roads. Oliver Sacks is a personal hero of mine, and a brilliant, prescient neurologist and writer. I did an interview with Dr. Sacks on Musicophilia last year in which he talks about his own experiences with psychedelics, and also an in-depth profile of him for Wired magazine in 2002 called "The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks." Enjoy.