Synopses & Reviews
Trevor Cox is on a hunt for the sonic wonders of the world. A renowned expert who engineers classrooms and concert halls, Cox has made a career of eradicating bizarre and unwanted sounds. But after an epiphany in the London sewers, Cox now revels in exotic noises--creaking glaciers, whispering galleries, stalactite organs, musical roads, humming dunes, seals that sound like alien angels, and a Mayan pyramid that chirps like a bird. With forays into archaeology, neuroscience, biology, and design, Cox explains how sound is made and altered by the environment, how our body reacts to peculiar noises, and how these mysterious wonders illuminate sound's surprising dynamics in everyday settings--from your bedroom to the opera house. encourages us to become better listeners in a world dominated by the visual and to open our ears to the glorious cacophony all around us.
Review
"Cox's enthusiasm for his specialty is contagious. I'll now be keeping my ears wide open." Washington Post
Review
"Turns up the volume on...sonic oddities." NPR
Review
"Reveals how much art there is in the act of listening. Reading it made my ears more mindful." Adam Gopnik
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"From its first page to its last, invites readers to close their eyes and open their ears to the sounds, both normal and peculiar, that surround us all." Science News
Review
"Bursting with aural arcana that adds just the right amount of tech-savvy detail, brings into relief a world often obscured in our image-heavy existence. Even as we follow Cox to the ends of the Earth, what makes his book a real rush is that its ultimately an ear-buzzing journey to the center of our minds." Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever
Review
"A riveting ear-opener. . . . A must-read for sound-lovers of all stripes." Bernie Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places
Synopsis
In this tour of the world's most unexpected sounds, Trevor Cox--the "David Attenborough of the acoustic realm" (Observer)--discovers the world's longest echo in a hidden oil cavern in Scotland, unlocks the secret of singing sand dunes in California, and alerts us to the aural gems that exist everywhere in between. Using the world's most amazing acoustic phenomena to reveal how sound works in everyday life, The Sound Book inspires us to become better listeners in a world dominated by the visual and to open our ears to the glorious cacophony all around us.
Synopsis
"A lucid and passionate case for a more mindful way of listening. . . . Anyone who has ever clapped, hollered or yodeled at an echo will delight in [Cox's] zestful curiosity."--
About the Author
A professor of acoustic engineering, Trevor Cox has appeared on the Discovery and National Geographic channels, produced seventeen BBC radio documentaries, and holds the Guinness Record for discovering the world's "Longest Echo." He lives in Manchester, England.