A Book of Noises is a quirky, original, and entertaining book. It consists of almost fifty “notes,” all a few pages long, captured in four themes: “Geophony: Sounds of Earth,” “Biophony: Sounds of Life,” “Anthropophony: Sounds of Humanity”—a categorization for which Henderson credits the soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause—and “Cosmophony: Sounds of Space,” the last one his own classification. This may give the impression of systematicity and scientific depth, but that is not what Henderson is after: “The entries in each category are just that—entrance points for longer journeys” (p. 2). The author is a journalist, and his book is most of all a spellbinding and enjoyable collection of faits divers that all pertain, in one way or another, to sound. It thus celebrates the auraculous: “a wonder for the ear” (p. 1).
The author clearly is knowledgeable about the sciences (he has a scientist’s predilection for numbers) and their iconic...