Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain
by Oliver Sacks

“Powerful and compassionate … A book that not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings and misfirings of the human mind.” — The New York Times

A Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Financial Times Best Book of the Year

“Sacks spins one fascinating tale after another to show what happens when music and the brain mix it up.” — Newsweek

“Sacks has an expert bedside manner: informed but humble… literary without being self-conscious.” — Los Angeles Times

“Musicophilia presents Oliver Sacks at his best, weaving neuroscience through a fascinating personal story, allowing us to think about brain functions and music in a bracing new light.” —Salon

“Luminous, original, and indispensable.…Musicophilia is like a concert of Chopin’s mazurkas: fast, inventive, and weirdly beautiful.” — American Scholar

With his trademark compassion and erudition, Oliver Sacks, whom The New York Times has called “the poet laureate of medicine,” explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the extraordinary experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people. Among them: a surgeon who is struck by lightning and suddenly becomes obsessed with Chopin; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans; and a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music. Dr. 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 who are deeply disoriented by Alzheimer’s or schizophrenia.

Music can be inspiring, moving us to the heights or depths of emotion—and it can also be our best medicine. In Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us the why.