How early America sounded

Editorial Reviews Review "Long before Howard Dean howled in Iowa, Quakers in East Jersey were 'tainted with the Ranting Spirit.'... Among their buttoned-up neighbors, the Puritans, these folks were considered possessed in 1675. But what's interesting, observes Richard Rath in this fascinating study, 'How Early America Sounded,' is that all sounds in those days indicated possession.... Rath connects the myriad ways in which sounds exerted social influence.... Finally, and most intriguingly, Rath says we may be living during just such a time again, as the printed transfers some of its authority to a more fluid and ephemeral cyberspace." , The Christian Science Monitor "Mr. Rath rehearses fascinating sound-details from the 17th and 18th centuries, reminding us that what we hear, and how we hear it, is no small part of experience." , The Wall Street Journal Review "What did the world of the early American colonists sound like? The native peoples and colonists alike were very much tuned in to their auditory world. Richard Cullen Rath's How Early America Sounded is a fascinating account of what might be called aural history. In our postmodern 'plugged-in' world, we archive sounds as photographs and video capture pictorial history, but as Rath points out, something has been lost, too. Think of this book as a going back to Walden Pond, but with one's ears wide open." -- Ron Hoy, Cornell University From the Inside Flap "As it moves from natural sounds to sounding boards to fiddles and finally to the rants of early Quakers and acoustics of meeting houses, Richard Cullen Rath’s book grows in persuasiveness and argumentative force. How Early America Sounded is a valiant text which stands alone in the diverse fields that it touches."—Robert Blair St. George, University of Pennsylvania "Richard Cullen Rath’s study of early American soundways is delightfully original, genuinely new, and always innovative. This is an exciting book of exceptional scholarly merit."—Mark M. Smith, author of Listening to Nineteenth-Century America "What did the world of the early American colonists sound like? The native peoples and colonists alike were very much tuned in to their auditory world. Richard Cullen Rath’s How Early America Sounded is a fascinating account of what might be called aural history. In our postmodern ‘plugged-in’ world, we archive sounds as photographs and video capture pictorial history, but as Rath points out, something has been lost, too. Think of this book as a going back to Walden Pond, but with one’s ears wide open."—Ron Hoy, Cornell University About the Author Richard Cullen Rath is Associate Professor of History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.