Sounds Wild and Broken by David George Haskell

Sounds Wild and Broken by David George Haskell

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.

David Haskell's work combines scientific, literary, and spiritual explorations of nature. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of the South. The Voices of Trees, which he published in 2017, won the John Burroughs Award for Outstanding Natural History Writing. His novel The Forest Unseen, published in 2012, was a Pulitzer Prize and PEN/E.O. finalist. Wilson Literary Science Writing Prize, as well as the National Academies' Best Book Award, the National Outdoor Book Award, and the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 2013.

In March 2022, his new book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, will be released. Visit dghaskell.com to hear a collection of sounds from the trees in this book.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781984881564
ISBN 10	1984881566
Title	Sounds Wild and Broken
Author	David George Haskell
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2023-03-07
Number of pages	448
Prizes	Commended for Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) 2023
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.