One Square Inch of Silence

One Man's Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World

Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann

This superb book by the world's finest listener will change forever the way you listen to both the natural and unnatural sounds of our planet. Hempton's continent-wide search for peace and tranquility in the music of nature is a cause to which we should all rally.

Donald Kroodsma, The Singing Life of Birds

Silence is the well spring of creation. A feast of silence is the only way into the understanding of nature. To listen to silence is to expand the spirit and cure the soul. Gordon Hempton takes us by the hand to visit this idea in his "One Square Inch of Silence."

Diana Beresford-Kroeger

Emmy Award-winning acoustic ecologist Hempton writes the next Silent Spring--and forever changes our conception of conservation and activism. A beautifully written call to arms against the agents of manmade noise, this eloquent defense of natural quiet comes packaged with the author's astounding recordings of nature.

Having completed a coast-to-coast mission to preserve and protect natural soundscapes, Gordon Hempton proclaims that,"The extinction rate for quiet places vastly exceeds the rate of species extinction." Part road trip, part popular science, and part polemic, One Square Inch of Silence is a celebration of nature and an ear-opening journey into Earth's vanishing sanctuaries. Like a sound safari, One Square Inch of Silence recounts Hempton's trek across the country to capture the sounds of American landscapes and the reflections of American people on the importance of quiet in their lives. Birdsong, melting ice, and bugling elk all achieve immortality as the author addresses questions of surprising importance, including: Why isn't natural quiet part of the ecological agenda? From rain forest to urban center, from rugged mountains to Midwestern prairie, the Earth is speaking. In language that is haunting and urgent, Hempton alerts us to a canary in a coalmine: for if we turn a deaf ear to the loss of natural quiet, we cannot expect to fare better with more complex environmental crises. Culminating in the author's arrival in Washington, D.C., where he pleads his case for the preservation of natural quiet, One Square Inch of Silence is one of the most impassioned and original environmentalist works ever written.

Gordon Hempton is an acoustic ecologist and Emmy Award-winning sound recordist who has provided audio services to Microsoft, Discovery, National Public Radio, and other organizations, and who has been profiled by major media including CBS News Sunday Morning, NPR, and People. He lives in Joyce, Washington. He can be contacted at ghempton@onesquareinch.org

John Grossmann has been a freelance writer of magazine articles and books for nearly his entire working career. He lives in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. He can be contacted at jgrossmann@onesquareinch.org

978-1-4165-5908-5
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5908-6
$26.00 hardcover
$29.99 in Canada
Other format:
eBook:
978-1-4165-5982-5, ISBN-10: 1-4165-5982-5

Coming March 24, 2009
Pre-order now, a portion of the proceeds will go towards One Square Inch.


See below for upcoming book tour events:

  • Events are coming soon, stay tuned!

For more information contact Andrew Dodds (Andrew.Dodds@simonandschuster.com), Publicist, Free Press/Simon & Schuster