An emotional and informative ode to the sonic connections we form throughout our lives.
Miller uses scientific, historical, and personal examples to explore our complex relationship with music in this nonfiction work.
Music is one of the most omnipresent and inscrutable elements of human existence. It’s an inescapable part of our life, but most of us—including the people who create it—don’t understand the details of how it affects our psyches. The author’s experiences as a musician, father, and omnivorous listener inform his debut, a deep dive into the ways we engage with songs both physically and emotionally. The result is a fascinating mix of scientific theory, musical analysis, and personal history that never feels dry or didactic. One highlight is Miller’s explanation of synesthesia, a neurological condition that allows him to see colors when he hears music. While the author often uses this gift to describe sounds in vivid visual terms, he takes care not to position himself as an expert: “I have to be mindful not to confuse [having] a fuller sensory picture with a fuller understanding. Synesthesia hasn’t made me a better listener, just a different kind of witness.” His humility and curiosity make the book feel more like a shared reflection than a lecture, even as the studies he cites indicate a clear understanding of the science behind sound. Miller references a variety of artists he loves (and hates) to illustrate audio’s effect on the audience, from Beethoven to Dolly Parton to John Mayer. One of the most affecting details is the way in which the author’s son, Anderson, who has Down syndrome and is mostly nonverbal, engages with heavy metal musician Andrew W.K.’s work: “I saw it on his face before I could name it,” Miller writes. “The connection lands. He knows the message got through.” This moving, incisive book is a great reminder of music’s power as a universal connector.
An emotional and informative ode to the sonic connections we form throughout our lives.Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798995656203
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Open Channel Press
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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