The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book about Noise - Paperback

by Garret Keizer (Author)

Noise is usually defined as unwanted sound: loud music from a neighbor, the honk of a taxicab, the roar of a supersonic jet. But as Garret Keizer illustrates in this probing examination, noise is as much about what we want as about what we seek to avoid. In a journey that leads us from the primeval Tanzanian veldt to wind farms in Maine, Keizer invites us to listen to noise in history, in popular culture, and not least of all in our own backyards. He follows noise throughout history and across the globe. He considers what it has to tell us about today's most pressing issues, from social inequality to climate change. The result is guaranteed to change how we hear the world, and how we measure our own personal volume within it.

Author Biography

Garret Keizer is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, a recent Guggenheim Fellow, and the author of five acclaimed books. His essays and poems have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, the New Yorker, Smithsonian.org, and the Village Voice. He lives with his wife in northeastern Vermont.