A finalist for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing
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.