Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. 

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

In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls musical misalignments. Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; 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. Illuminating inspiring and utterly unforgettable.