Music Books

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks

Amazon Price: $21.86 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $16.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Theory, Composition & Performance -> Appreciation
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 94 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach

Meryl Gordon

Amazon Price: $51.09 List Price: $69.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Tantor Media Amazon Marketplace: 5 new & used starting at $44.22

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Rich & Famous
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 50 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Everyone's A Victim 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book since I had met Mrs. Astor along with the Oscar de la Rentas at a Metropolitan Museum party many years ago. She was very gracious and quick-witted. She asked me where I lived. I told her, "Tennessee!" She responded, "then what the hell are you doing here?!" "Supporting the museum", I retorted. I took no offense to this quick wit and laughed at her frank demeanor. I found the book to be very revealing in that trouble besets all families at one point or another...any money does not make one immune to family embarassments and trouble. In fact, money actually complicates the picture. The author has an excellent writing style. The reader feels that one is sitting at a clothed table at a nice club as the author tells the story in such a matter-of-fact manner. I recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in New York society or historical families. The book has a steady ebb and flow to the plot and the last two chapters become intensely exciting; for as the book nears the end, there is a rise in tempo that kept me transfixed beyond my bedtime. For the enjoyment that you will derive, it is certainly worth the price.

Editorial Review:

A riveting look behind the gates of the house of Astor as a famous family falls apart in public.

John Lennon: The Life CD

Philip Norman

Amazon Price: $28.37 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperAudio Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $20.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> Rock
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Philip Norman turns his formidable talent to the Beatle for whom belonging to the world's most beloved pop group was never enough. Drawing on previously untapped sources, and with unprecedented access to all the major characters, here is the definitive portrait of John Lennon.

This masterly biography takes a fresh and penetrating look at Lennon's much-chronicled life, including the songs that have turned him, posthumously, into almost a secular saint. In three years of research, Norman has turned up an extraordinary amount of new information about even the best-known episodes of Lennon folklore. The book's numerous key informants and interviewees include Sir Paul McCartney, Sir George Martin, and Yoko Ono, who speaks with sometimes shocking candor about the inner workings of her marriage to John.

Honest and unflinching, as John himself would wish, Norman gives us the whole man in all his endless contradictions—tough and cynical, hilariously funny but also naive, vulnerable and insecure—and reveals how the mother who gave him away as a toddler haunted his mind and his music for the rest of his days.

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Daniel J. Levitin

Amazon Price: $21.86 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin Audio Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $11.26

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Reference -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Reference -> General AAS
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Theory, Composition & Performance -> Theory

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 114 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:
• How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our heads

And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin argues that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. This Is Your Brain on Music is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Steve Martin

Amazon Price: $21.27 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Audio Amazon Marketplace: 58 new & used starting at $6.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Actors & Actresses
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Entertainers
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 210 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Emmy and Grammy Award-winner's candid, spectacularly amusing memoir of his years in stand-up

In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. Born Standing Up is, in his own words, the story of "why I did stand-up and why I walked away."

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times: the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Alex Ross

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Blackstone Audio Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $21.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> History & Criticism
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

don't waste your time 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 32 people found this review helpful.

If you have to write a paper on this so-called music, this book might be useful, but other than that the author tries to find meaning when there is nothing there to find. The "music" he writes about is painful to the ears, the book is painful to the eyes.

Editorial Review:

The scandal over modern music has not died down. While modern paintings by Picasso and Pollock sell for a hundred million or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences. Yet the influence of modern sound can be felt everywhere. Alex Ross, the brilliant music critic for the New Yorker, shines a bright light on this secret world and shows how it has pervaded every corner of twentieth century life.

The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern sound, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to bohemian Paris, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We meet the maverick personalities who have defied the classical past, and we follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics on this sweeping tour of twentieth century history through its music.

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Shambhala Audio Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $7.73

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General
Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Stress Management

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 129 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

esoteric drivel 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 18 people found this review helpful.

It is an indication that something is wrong if you have to go read another book or two on history and philosophy of Buddhism in order to understand the esoteric dogma she is talking about.

Now to put all this in simple terms the jest of the book seams to be:

We are all going to die and we should think about it all the time.
There is no hope and we should not even try
All is suffering and we should not try to do anything about it
All is pain and we should try to find more pain.
We do not have a soul and if you think you do you are deluded

These are not good messages for someone who is really in a state of depression or flux
I can not see what anyone gets out of this book

Her point if there is one is almost un-understandable through all the esoteric drivel

Editorial Review:

To listen to an audio excerpt online in MP3 format, click here.

How can we go on living when things fall apart—when we are overcome by pain, fear, and anxiety? Pema Chödrön’s answer to that question contains some spectacularly good news: there is a fundamental happiness readily available to each one of us, no matter how difficult things seem to be. To find it, according to traditional Buddhist teaching, we must learn to stop running from suffering and instead actually learn to approach it—fearlessly, compassionately, and with curiosity. This radical practice enables us to use all situations, even very painful ones, as means for discovering the truth and love that are utterly indestructible.

2 CDs, 2 1/2 hours, abridged 

Clapton: The Autobiography

Eric Clapton

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: RH Audio Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $15.48

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> Rock
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 322 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way.”

With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life in this poignant and honest autobiography. More than a rock star, he is an icon, a living embodiment of the history of rock music. Well known for his reserve in a profession marked by self-promotion, flamboyance, and spin, he now chronicles, for the first time, his remarkable personal and professional journeys.

Born illegitimate in 1945 and raised by his grandparents, Eric never knew his father and, until the age of nine, believed his actual mother to be his sister. In his early teens his solace was the guitar, and his incredible talent would make him a cult hero in the clubs of Britain and inspire devoted fans to scrawl “Clapton is God” on the walls of London’s Underground. With the formation of Cream, the world's first supergroup, he became a worldwide superstar, but conflicting personalities tore the band apart within two years. His stints in Blind Faith, in Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and in Derek and the Dominos were also short-lived but yielded some of the most enduring songs in history, including the classic “Layla.”

During the late sixties he played as a guest with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, as well as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and longtime friend George Harrison. It was while working with the latter that he fell for George’s wife, Pattie Boyd, a seemingly unrequited love that led him to the depths of despair, self-imposed seclusion, and drug addiction. By the early seventies he had overcome his addiction and released the bestselling album 461 Ocean Boulevard, with its massive hit “I Shot the Sheriff.” He followed that with the platinum album Slowhand, which included “Wonderful Tonight,” the touching love song to Pattie, whom he finally married at the end of 1977. A short time later, however, Eric had replaced heroin with alcohol as his preferred vice, following a pattern of behavior that not only was detrimental to his music but contributed to the eventual breakup of his marriage.
In the eighties he would battle and beat alcoholism and become a father. But just as his life was coming together, he was struck by a terrible blow: His beloved four-year-old son, Conor, died in a freak accident. At an earlier time Eric might have coped with this tragedy by fleeing into a world of addiction. But now a much stronger man, he took refuge in music, responding with the achingly beautiful “Tears in Heaven.”

Clapton is the powerfully written story of a survivor, a man who has achieved the pinnacle of success despite extraordinary demons. It is one of the most compelling memoirs of our time.

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation

Sheila Weller

Amazon Price: $31.49 List Price: $49.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Tantor Media Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $26.70

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> Rock
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Loved the idea for the book...but felt like reading a term paper 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Loved the concept, insight, subject matter but the writing left so much to be desired. I also failed to appreciate the writer's cultural references. This could have been a really wonderful book if it was written less like a technical paper. Felt like a mandatory book to be read in a Women's Studies class...yikes.

Fabulous 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

First things first. Sheila Weller is a pro. If the national media had done the same kind of quality reporting and research on stories of national importance as Sheila devoted to this wonderful history of three pivotal figures of the music of our time, who knows whether history could have been different.

She has devoted these considerable talents to the three stories of musicians who each in her own way helped to shape the music of the 1970s -- Carole King from Brooklyn, Joni Mitchell from Saskatchewan and Carly Simon from Manhattan. They were all different, but all contributed, sometimes in multiple ways, particularly King who transformed herself from Brill Building pop writer for hire to the L.A. Earth Mother who scored with Tapestry.

I first listened to the music years ago, and quite frankly had forgotten much of it. It was only when I started converting my vinyl to digital that I got interested again and began to read some of the books about the music and the time period.

Weller truly brings a sense of the times and of the challenges each woman faced. She combines a really gossipy account of each of the subjects with a serious appreciation for the music and of their eras. (Obviously I write this as a man. Women will probably have a better, and deeper appreciation.)

If I had one gripe, it's that even at 500 pages, I would have liked to see someone else included. As great as Carole, Joni and Carly were, I would have put Linda Ronstadt in, probably instead of Carly. For my money, Linda's voice was, and remains, the best of the three. She wasn't the songwriter the others were, but she was also in the middle of the Laurel Canyon scene. Perhaps Weller can write about her some day.

This book is a great contribution to the understanding of some of my favorite music. In fact, it helped change a little piece of my life. I went back and listened to Tapestry and heard a song I'd forgotten about amid all the hits -- a nice bouncy little piece called, "Beautiful." Now, first thing when I get in the car to go to work, I put on that song. It's a great way to start the day, and I probably wouldn't have done it without first reading Weller's book. That's a contribution in itself I'll always appreciate.

Editorial Review:

Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon, midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them---confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.

Cobain Unseen

Charles R. Cross

Amazon Price: $19.79 List Price: $29.98 Not yet published By: Hachette Audio

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Composers & Musicians -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Entertainers

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Cobain Unseen 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Charles Cross did a very good job on this book. It is informative and creative. There is a CD included of Kurt reading his journals that is just mesmerizing. The book gives a good detailed picture of Kurt Cobain and his art in it's many forms and leaves the reader wanting more (as do all books about Kurt). I especially would like to see more CD's of Kurt's speaking coming our way.

Editorial Review:

An unparalleled look inside the brilliant mind of one of America's most revered rock legends, Cobain Unseen collects previously unseen artifacts and photographs from the estate's archives to form a fascinating portrait of the creativity, madness, and genius of Kurt Cobain.
Personal items and photographs take readers deeper inside Cobain's life than they've ever been before, and interactive features, such as Kurt's handwritten sticker-sheet of Nirvana name tags, facsimiles of unseen journal pages, and gatefolds of his graffiti-embellished guitars make this an essential keepsake. An audio CD showcasing spoken-word material by Cobain, some of it never before released, will be included. Accompanying the previously unpublished images and memorabilia is a compelling biographical narrative by New York Times-bestselling author Charles R. Cross.