Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening

By David Hendy

Prehistoric drummers used natural acoustics to recreate natural sound. In classical Europe, orators turned the human voice into a lyrical instrument. In Buddhist temples, the icons' ears were exaggerated to represent their spiritual power. And in modern metropolises we are battered by the roar of sound that surrounds us.

In the first narrative history of the subject which puts humans at its centre, and following the author's major BBC Radio 4 series Noise, acclaimed historian David Hendy describes the history of noise - which is also the history of listening. As he puts it: 'By thinking about sound and listening, I want to get closer to what it felt like to live in the past.'

This unusual book reveals fascinating changes in how we have understood our fellow human beings and the world around us. For although we might see ourselves inhabiting a visual world, our lives are shaped by our need to hear and be heard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Release date: Mar 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781847659446

David Hendy

David Hendy is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sussex. He has been a visiting research fellow at the University of Cambridge; Yale University; and Indiana University, Bloomington. He worked as a journalist and producer at the BBC, and in 2011 was awarded the James W. Carey Award for Outstanding Journalism by the Media Ecology Association of North America for his five-part BBC Radio 3 series, Rewiring the Mind. His book Life on Air: A History of Radio Four won the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Award.