Description
Book Synopsis"My hope is that by attending to sound I have been able to open up parts of these worlds, not to get a glimpse of them but to listen in. These were worlds much more alive with sound than our own, worlds not yet disenchanted, worlds perhaps even...
Trade ReviewLong before Howard Dean howled in Iowa, Quakers in East Jersey were 'tainted with the Ranting Spirit.'... Among their buttoned-up neighbors, the Puritans, these folks were considered possessed in 1675. But what's interesting, observes Richard Rath in this fascinating study, 'How Early America Sounded,' is that all sounds in those days indicated possession.... Rath connects the myriad ways in which sounds exerted social influence.... Finally, and most intriguingly, Rath says we may be living during just such a time again, as the printed transfers some of its authority to a more fluid and ephemeral cyberspace.
* The Christian Science Monitor *
Mr. Rath rehearses fascinating sound-details from the 17th and 18th centuries, reminding us that what we hear, and how we hear it, is no small part of experience.
* The Wall Street Journal *
Table of Contents"Those thunders, those roarings": the natural soundscape; from the sounds of things; no corner for the Devil to hide; on the rant; the howling wilderness; conclusions.
