This Is the Voice

Starred review from November 23, 2020
“The voice is a vital clue to character and personality—to fundamental identity,” writes journalist Colapinto (Becoming a Neurosurgeon) in this fascinating exploration of the human voice. He begins by describing how babies are born capable of learning any of the world’s 7,000 languages and argues that humans owe “our planetary dominion not to language alone, but to our special talent for turning that awesome attribute into sound.” Colapinto explains fundamental aspects of the human voice, including the physiology that makes human speech possible (e.g., neural circuitry and the organs involved); how tone, pitch, and accent can have social relevance for men and women (particularly entertaining is his take on “vocal fry,” a “croaky” way of speaking credited to Kim Kardashian); and, using Obama and Trump as examples, how the combined power of voice and rhetoric can persuade voters (he suggests that, in political speech, “voice” is the primary influence on voters’ decision). Colapinto’s narrative is chock full of information, and is something any curious-minded reader will be glad to have spent time with. Agent: Lisa Bankoff.

November 15, 2020
An expert popular science account of human speech. In his latest, New Yorker staff writer Colapinto provides an intensely researched, tightly focused, lucidly written story that is long but not too long. As the author points out, to call human speech a "miraculous feat" understates the case. All other animals "use their voices to make in-the-now proclamations about immediate survival and reproductive concerns, including expressions of fear, anger, hunger and mating urges." Evolved perhaps 200,000 years ago, human language allows us to refer to events in the past or future and to make plans that we share with others, "to build the villages, towns, cities and nations that have given us primacy over the Planet and everything on it." Even before birth, infants listen, their brains absorbing a dazzling array of tone, phonetics, syntax, patterns, and rules. Despite what early experts taught, language is not pre-installed in the brain at birth; babies learn it, usually accumulating a "mental dictionary" of 60,000 words by age 18. They achieve this because words are not random assemblages of digits. They carry meaning, and we are a species that craves meaning. Midway through the book, Colapinto moves from the mechanism of speech to its purpose. Darwin compared the changes languages undergo to natural selection, but the author disagrees. Over time, he maintains, changes in articulation, accent, and vocabulary have not increased but hobbled their efficiency, creating a Babel of incomprehensible tongues that pushes us apart. Observers claimed that the spread of media, from radio to the internet, would homogenize American speech, but the opposite occurred. Instant communication has combined with bitter ideological, economic, and cultural clashes to accelerate the creation of new American speech patterns. In the final chapter, Colapinto discusses political oratory, which has united Americans in the past. He gives high marks to the rhetoric of presidents such as Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan; however, like the majority of Americans, he considers Trump a divisive force. A rich trove of science and contemporary culture.

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December 15, 2020
New Yorker staffer Colapinto lost his chance at a career in rock 'n' roll when he could barely squeak a note. A large nodule on his vocal cords sent him into the weeds, studying all things related to voice, speech, and language. This heavily researched book discusses vocal origins and details how voice involves the physicality of lungs, diaphragm, intercostal muscles, larynx, teeth, tongue, and facial bones. Our brains also shape and color how we sound. Colapinto follows scientific language studies from Charles Darwin, Noam Chomsky, and B. F. Skinner and considers the effects of AI on speech. Other chapters discuss the dimorphism of gendered voices and how age diminishes that divide; class distinctions both affect the way people react to dialects and contribute to prejudices. In the public sphere, the voice can persuade and dissuade (think FDR and Hitler). Especially interesting is his theory of how Abraham Lincoln's high voice helped win a presidential debate. Insights on why babies vocalize before they speak words further fascinate. Lots of data, evidence, thoughtfulness, and heart here.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2021

A University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, Barrett (How Emotions Are Made) gives us Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, explaining the origin, structure, and function of that blobby gray mass (50,0000-copy first printing). In This Is the Voice, New Yorker staffer Colapinto, author of the New York Times best-selling As Nature Made Him, explains how this most efficient means of communication defines humans individually and as a whole (75,000-copy first printing). The Dalai Lama's Our Only Home calls on politicians--and encourages the younger generation--to save our planet (50,000-copy first printing). Cambridge historian Falk's The Light Ages shows that the so-called Dark Ages were actually lit up by a keen scientific culture, as universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks got their start. The Kolokotrones University Professor and chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University, public health giant Farmer offers an account of the 2014 Ebola crisis that should be especially revealing for us today; as suggested by the title, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, there's sociopolitical context here (20,000-copy first printing). Fung follows up his internationally best-selling The Diabetes Code and The Obesity Code by discussing not just the origin and treatment of cancer but its prevention in The Cancer Code (100,000-copy first printing). Having explored the mental life of octopuses in Other Minds, Godfrey-Smith, a scuba-diving professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney, now looks more deeply into animal consciousness in Metazoa. Barnard astrophysicist Levin, a PEN/Bingham Prize-winning novelist and director of sciences at the arts-and-sciences center Pioneer Works, has the wherewithal to provide a Black Hole Survival Guide explaining the cosmos.

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