The Human Voice

Can you tell the mood of your loved ones by their tone of voice on the phone? Are you surprised to learn that Margaret Thatcher never had voice coaching? Would you be interested in learning how to intuit much of what you struggle to know about someone through listening in the right way?

For most people, the voice is just something that happens when they open their mouths, it's taken for granted, something that people claim never to have given a second thought. But our ability to communicate is crucially dependent on the voice and the voice lies at the heart of what it is to be human.

Anne Karpf's book aims to establish a sense of the importance of the human voice and to thoroughly investigate its physiological, social, psychological, emotional and cultural history and significance. In examining the voice in this way Anne Karpf has written a fascinatingly diverse book, and it is as she follows the story of the voice from the role it plays in bonding mothers and babies, through the evocative power of famous voices, to the fears that modern technology may send the voice into decline that we gain great insight into communication and human life.