Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat.  But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical species.

Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people—from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music.

Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia.

Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

"Neurologist and professor Sacks, best known for his books Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, dedicates his latest effort to the relationship between music and unusual brain disorders. Embracing the notion that neurology is an inherently British phenomenon, foreign to the New World, Sacks's book is read by impeccably polished actor Prebble (PW's 2006 Narrator of the Year). As befitting so urbane and smooth a reader, Prebble sounds as if his shirt had just been starched and his lab coat carefully pressed before beginning. With nary a word out of place, Prebble steps onto the stage, playing the good Dr. Sacks for this one-time-only performance. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 27)." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

“The persuasive essays about composers, patients, savants, and ordinary people . . . offer captivating variations on the central premise that human beings are ‘exquisitely tuned’ to the illuminating yet ultimately mysterious powers of music.”

Elle

“If we could prescribe what our physicians would be like, a good number of us would probably choose somebody like Sacks. Learned, endlessly inquisitive and seemingly possessed of a bottomless store of human compassion, the neurologist's authorial personality both reassures and arouses curiosity . . . Sacks is as good a guide to this mysterious and barely understood world as one could ask for, mixing serious case studies with personal takes on music and what its ultimate uses could possibly be.”

Kirkus

From the Hardcover edition.

“A gifted writer and a neurologist, Sacks spins one fascinating tale after another to show what happens when music and the brain mix it up.”

Newsweek

From the Hardcover edition.

“Neurologist Sacks, one of the foremost physician-essayists of the day, charmingly argues that music is essential to being human in ways that have only begun to be understood. . . His customary erudition and fellow-feeling ensure that, no matter how clinical the discussion becomes, it remains, like the music of Mozart, accessible and congenial.”

Booklist

“Dr. Sacks writes not just as a doctor and a scientist but also as a humanist with a philosophical and literary bent. . . [his] book not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings, and misfirings, of the human mind.”

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“His work is luminous, original, and indispensable . . . Musicophilia is a Chopin mazurka recital of a book, fast, inventive and weirdly beautiful . . . Yet what is most awe-inspiring is his observational empathy.”

American Scholar

“With the exception of Lewis Thomas, no physician has ever written better about his trade.”

Salon

Oliver Sacks is a physician and the author of nine previous books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings (which inspired the Oscar-nominated film). He lives in New York City, where he is Professor of Clinical Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. Visit his website at www.oliversacks.com.