The Grand Design: Steven Hawking

I don't really know what to tell you about this one. It is the newest book published by the greatest astrophysicist, cosmologist, and overall scientist of our time. The more answers we find the more questions arise and we have made some astonishing leaps, but continue to search for more and probably always will. I found it to be certainly worth while and chock-full of information and of the type of terrible jokes you would expect to hear from such a brilliant mind. Read it or don't, I doubt anything I try to explain would sway you either way on this one. I will tell you that he delves into and explains the entire history and progression of modern science and the theories of important scientists and mathematicians dating back to Pythagoras, Galileo, and Einstein, and the theories of Alchemy, Relativity, Super String, and most newly and notably M-Theory. He also discusses experiments, models, theories, and possibilities of other universes, dimensions, and the ongoing search for the "Unified theory of everything," (as Jeff Tweedy sings) which has been carried out through the ages and continues still. Wrap your head around this one if you can. I tried and think maybe ten more readings would help...or would they.....

Daniel J. Levitin: This is Your Brain on Music

This is Your Brain On Music obviously has a catchy title to anyone old enough to remember those corny public service announcements from the late 80's and I suppose it would take a special kind of person to be younger than that and be interested, but it is indeed a literal title. Levitin's book is an attempt at breaking down some new findings in neuroscience in regard to cognition and brain function while listening to, and/or playing music. Said attempt is a two-fold operation in that Levitin aims to discuss both neuroscience and abstract music theory with the average educated person. I believe that he succeeds very well in doing so for the science, but not necessarily for the music. I had no problem reading through the areas where he slowly discussed the very simplest of musical ideas because I know that music as a language and in written form can be very daunting and scary to the layperson, but later on he rattles through more complex concepts as if he has described the first two years of college level music theory in his first several paragraphs on the subject. I believe this leaves the musical discussion in a bit of a strange gray area. The explanations lie in a difficult place for non musicians and musicologists, but in a bit of a redundant and over explained place for the musically educated. However, I wouldn't call this an overt problem by any stretch of the imagination. There were things here and there in the neuroscience portion that went over my head, but within context I was able to roughly grasp them and move on so I suppose it is possible that others were able to do the same with the musical examples. The explanations of scientist's and experiments including music being played for infants and real time MRI's scanning brains during music listening and playing; and top neuroscientist's- including co-discoverer of the DNA strand and Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist, Francis Crick- discussing music and cognition make for an extremely enlightening and surprisingly fast read. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the brain and it's untapped potential and most definitely am recommending it to all musician's and science lover's.