People have traditionally done a shabby job at protecting their ears. David Owen, a 60-something tinnitus sufferer with mild hearing loss, recalls of his childhood, "We had been warned that slingshots and BB guns and darts and arrows and gym towels could blind us if we aimed them at each other's faces, but I have no memory of being similarly advised about the dangers of sound."
Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World is Owen's look at how society has historically treated (in both senses) the deaf, and what we are doing now to solve the problem of hearing loss. A staff writer for the New Yorker who has written more than a dozen books on a host of topics, Owen dutifully metes out the basics about the auditory system, but it's Volume Control's human-interest angle that enthralls. He discusses the ongoing controversy within the deaf community regarding surgical cures; one of Owen's many interview subjects, a tinnitus researcher with a hearing-impaired daughter, explains that some who consider their deafness part of their cultural identity believe that "cochlear implants are unnecessary--that they are solutions to a problem that doesn't exist." And Owen offers a heartbreaking riff on how military men and women, whose ears have always taken a beating, are even today given the message from higher-ups that wearing ear protection and complaining of hearing loss are signs of weakness.
Although Volume Control is inevitably cautionary, the book is not a scold. That's because Owen's curiosity rather than an agenda powers his research. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer