Hearing History: A Reader

Smith (history, University of South Carolina-Columbia) collects 21 important writings in the new field of aural history. Most were published between 1992 and 2003, with a couple of exceptions—"Listening" from Jacques Attali's Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), and "American Noise, 1900-1930," by Raymond W. Smilor from an article published in American Studies in 1977. Other topics include sound and the self; perceiving sound in the Middle Ages; hearing Renaissance England; sound Christians and religious hearing in Enlightenment America; and recording sound; recording race, recording property. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Mark M. Smith is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. His books include Listening to Nineteenth-Century America.