Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Sounds Wild and Broken by David George Haskell - Wait list

Sounds Wild and Broken

Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

by David George Haskell
Steven Jay Cohen
Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
Place a hold Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award
“[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review

A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces
We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound 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 animal groups 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 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, and shows 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, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity.
 
Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check out the rest of Cuyahoga County Public Library's digital offerings, like newspapers, streaming video, music, and more.