This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Book Review: great, a revelation
Summary: 5 Stars
As a professional musician and a medical doctor, I must say it is the best book on music - in all its facets - that I've ever read. Book Review: Amazing facts from a uniquely well-informed expert
Summary: 5 Stars
The author is very experienced in both the relevant science, and the real music industry. I have a strong sense that he knows what he's talking about and is highly credible. The writing style is excellent. There were all kinds of facts in here that ranged from novel to amazing. This really does tell you important things about how psychoacoustics works, and has a lot of ideas and speculations (it's hard to prove) about the meaning and function of music in the human experience. I've been recommending this one to lots of my friends.Book Review: On the whole, not worthwhile
Summary: 2 Stars
Like many of the negative reviewers, I found that *This Is Your Brain on Music* didn't enhance either my knowledge of music or of cognitive science. It's not without any substance, but that substance has been spread pretty thinly, and it offers one of the weakest evolutionary explanations for music as a human phenomenon: it demonstrates fitness because it indicates abundant amounts of free time. Perhaps this is true of the drive to perform, but what about the millions of people addicted to listening to music? Isn't music in some way *special* ? No one gets a painting "stuck in their head" for days as happens with music, and there doesn't seem to be a visual corollary to those stroke victims who can no longer speak--but who can still sing. To be sure, Levitin doesn't seem particularly interested in this, but this is part of the problem with the book. I also have to agree with reviewers that felt the book was disorganized and not compellingly written, but I never found Levitin to be particularly egocentric--I think he's making the case that he's well-qualified to discuss both the brain and music. Unfortunately, he doesn't convincingly do either, and the book's most memorable element is probably the title.Book Review: Very interesting
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a musician and although I have not yet finished the book it has captivated me and helped me realize why I am the way I am and maybe why others are the way they are as far as music choices. God made us incredible!Book Review: Attempts to popularize recent pscyhology research on music
Summary: 2 Stars
And fails. Two main problems:
1) Levitin can't write worth a darn: inelegant, disorganized (both on the larger scale and in things like dividing his prose into paragraphs) and sloppy. I keep hearing about how the publishing industry has largely stopped editing books and I think this is a case in point. Simply editing and asking for re-writes might have substantially improved Levitin's lazy effort. The author also name-drops like crazy, plopping in the names (and university affiliations - like who cares?) of his scientific researchers for no reason frequently throughout the book. This is a popularization of a scientific field so of course researchers conducting studies on specific subjects should be discussed. But Levitin instead swerves from one (vapid) anecdote to another with no structure or objective in sight and no organized discussion of a particular researcher or research school's motivating idea or aim. The most painful example of these instances is his lunch with Francis Crick - the point of that extended anecdote seems to be that Levitin met a world-famous scientist. Good for you, Dan.
2) I would conclude from this book that psychological research into musical perception has yielded no interesting results, not even any moderately interesting ones. Now "Your brain on music" occasionally perked my interest here and there. But on those occasions, Levitin doesn't explain research results and instead makes critical observations about music that aren't reliant on psychology. I'm frankly not sure whether music psychology deserves better than this - maybe it has yielded fascinating insights into the mind. But you wouldn't know it from this work.
Poor content, poor style, poor effort.