<b>More than money, power, and even happiness, silence has become the most precious—and dwindling—commodity of our modern world.  </b><br><b> </b><br>Between iPods, music-blasting restaurants, earsplitting sports stadiums, and endless air and road traffic, the place for quiet in our lives grows smaller by the day.  <i>In Pursuit of Silence</i> gives context to our increasingly desperate sense that noise pollution is, in a very real way, an environmental catastrophe.  Listening to doctors, neuroscientists, acoustical engineers, monks, activists, educators, marketers, and aggrieved citizens, George Prochnik examines why we began to be so loud as a society, and what it is that gets lost when we can no longer find quiet.  He shows us the benefits of decluttering our sonic world.  <br> <br>As Prochnik travels across the United States and overseas, we meet a rich host of characters: an idealistic architect who is pioneering a new kind of silent architecture in collaboration with the Deaf community at Gallaudet University; a special operations soldier in Afghanistan (and former guitarist with Nirvana) who places silence at the heart of survival in war; a sound designer for shopping malls who ensures that the stores we visit never stop their auditory seductions; and a group of commuters who successfully revolted against piped-in music in Grand Central Station. <br> <br>A brilliant, far-reaching exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence, and the growing war between them,<b> </b><i>In Pursuit of Silence</i> is an important book that will appeal to fans of Michael Pollan and Daniel Gilbert.<br> <br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>