Sound, tone, music, voice, and noise as forms of sonority through which our current economic and ecological crises can be understood. In this wide-ranging book, Frances Dyson examines the role of sound in the development of economic and ecological systems that are today in crisis. Connecting early theories of harmony, cosmology, and theological doctrine to contemporary media and governance, Dyson uses sound, tone, music, voice, and noise as forms of sonority through which the crises of “eco” can be read. The sonic environment, Dyson argues, is fundamental to both sense and sensibility, and its delimitation has contributed to the “senselessness” of a world now caught between spiraling debt and environmental degradation. Dyson draws on scenes, historical moments, artworks, and artistic and theoretical practice to situate the reverberative atmosphere that surrounds and sustains us. From Pythagoras's hammer and the transmutation of music into mathematics, to John Cage's famous experience in the anechoic chamber, to the relocation of the stock market from the street to the computer screen, to Occupy Wall Street's “people's microphone”: Dyson finds policies and practices of exclusion. The sound of Pythagoras's forge and the rabble of the market have been muted, rearticulated, and transformed, Dyson argues, through the monotones of media, the racket of financialization, and the gibberish of political speech. Informed by contemporary sound art, philosophy, media and sociopolitical theory, The Tone of Our Times offers insights into present crises that are relevant to a broader understanding of how space, the aural, and listening have shaped and continue to shape the world we live in.

Sound, tone, music, voice, and noise as forms of sonority through which our current economic and ecological crises can be understood. In this wide-ranging book, Frances Dyson examines the role of sound in the development of economic and ecological systems that are today in crisis. Connecting early theories of harmony, cosmology, and theological doctrine to contemporary media and governance, Dyson uses sound, tone, music, voice, and noise as forms of sonority through which the crises of “eco” can be read. The sonic environment, Dyson argues, is fundamental to both sense and sensibility, and its delimitation has contributed to the “senselessness” of a world now caught between spiraling debt and environmental degradation. Dyson draws on scenes, historical moments, artworks, and artistic and theoretical practice to situate the reverberative atmosphere that surrounds and sustains us. From Pythagoras's hammer and the transmutation of music into mathematics, to John Cage's famous experience in the anechoic chamber, to the relocation of the stock market from the street to the computer screen, to Occupy Wall Street's “people's microphone”: Dyson finds policies and practices of exclusion. The sound of Pythagoras's forge and the rabble of the market have been muted, rearticulated, and transformed, Dyson argues, through the monotones of media, the racket of financialization, and the gibberish of political speech. Informed by contemporary sound art, philosophy, media and sociopolitical theory, The Tone of Our Times offers insights into present crises that are relevant to a broader understanding of how space, the aural, and listening have shaped and continue to shape the world we live in.

"After finding a mysterious key, eleven-year-old Lin Rosenquist finds herself in the wintery world of Sylver where all the inhabitants were once either beloved pets or tamed wild animals, and must find the missing Winter Prince before she can return home"--

The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time—Now a New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller. In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

A history of acoustics from the 19th century to the present, written by one of the pre-eminent members of the acoustical community. The book is both a review of the major scientific advances in acoustics as well as an account of famous acousticians and their discoveries, taking in the development of the Acoustical Society of America. Acoustics is distinguished by its interdisciplinary nature and the book duly explores the fields development in its relationship to other sciences. In addition to covering the history of acoustics, the book concludes with the future of acoustics. Beautifully illustrated.

The intimate and long-awaited memoir of guitar legend Carlos Santana. In 1967 at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, a young guitarist played a blistering solo that announced a prodigious talent. Two years later he played a historic set at Woodstock, and the world came to know Carlos Santana by name. THE UNIVERSAL TONE is a tale of musical self-determination and self-discovery. It traces his journey from his teen days playing in Tijuana, and the establishment of his signature guitar sound; his roles as husband, father and rock star; and his recording of some of the most influential rock albums of all time, up to and beyond the sensational SUPERNATURAL, which garnered nine Grammy awards. The book abounds with a fearlessness that finds humour in the world of high-flying fame, speaks plainly of personal revelations, and celebrates the divine and infinite possibility Santana sees in each person he meets.

“The last novel where I rooted for every character, and the last to make me cry.” - Marlon James, Elle From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory and the Oprah's Book Club selection Bewilderment comes Richard Powers's magnificent, multifaceted novel about a supremely gifted—and divided—family, set against the backdrop of postwar America. On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Black Philadelphian studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and—against all odds and their better judgment—they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the civil rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, “whose voice could make heads of state repent,” follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both. Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing is a story of self-invention, allegiance, race, cultural ownership, the compromised power of music, and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all belonging.

This revelatory memoir from Britain's former Prime Minister offers vital insights into our extraordinary times. Former Prime Minister and the country's longest-serving Chancellor, Gordon Brown has been a guiding force for Britain and the world over three decades. This is his candid, poignant and deeply relevant story. In describing his upbringing in Scotland as the son of a minister, the near loss of his eyesight as a student and the death of his daughter within days of her birth, he shares the passionately-held principles that have shaped and driven him, reminding us that politics can and should be a calling to serve. Reflecting on the personal and ideological tensions within Labour and its successes and failures in power, he describes how to meet the challenge of pursuing a radical agenda within a credible party of government. From the invasion of Iraq to the tragedy of Afghanistan, from the coalition negotiations of 2010 to the referendums on Scottish independence and Europe, Gordon Brown draws on his unique experiences to explain Britain's current fractured condition. By showing us what progressive politics has achieved in recent decades, he inspires us with a vision of what it might yet achieve. Riveting, expert and highly personal, this historic memoir is an invaluable insight into our times.

During the last three quarters of a century, the rate and character of change in all human affairs have been phenomenal. How has the Christian church in its various forms reacted the this series of revolutions—revolutions which have often vitally affected its own ways of thinking, its styles of life, and its worship? In particular, how has it responded to the idea of visible Christian unity, which long lay dormant, but now has taken fire in the lives of millions of its members? This book seeks to answer these and similar questions. It gives what is at many points an “inside story” of the significant events, since the author has taken an active part, and often a leading part, in a great deal of what he describes.

Through brilliant portraits of real persons who created the myths and realities of the 1930s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton brings that turbulent decade to life. Himself a child of the time, Kempton examines with the insight and imagination of a novelist the men and women who embraced, grappled with, and in many cases were destroyed by the myth of revolution. What he calls the “ruins and monuments of the Thirties” include Paul Robeson, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers, the Hollywood Ten, the rebel women Elizabeth Bentley and Mary Heaton Vorse, and the labor leaders Walter Reuther and Joe Curran.