One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Quest to Preserve Quiet Book

I consider myself a fairly aware and in-tune with nature person and I like to think that I use all of my senses - sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing when interacting with the world around me. However, reading this book I realized how immune I've become to sounds around me. On a daily basis, I experience such a barage of human-made sounds, many of which are loud and unpleasant to my ears, that I've taught myself (unconsciously) to tune them out. In this book, Hempton goes in search of silence which he defines as 15 seconds of natural sound uniterrupted by human made noise. 15 seconds is not a very long time and one would think that finding 15 seconds of Hempton's "silence" would be fairly easy to come by. Traveling from the Olympic Pennisula in Washington state to Washington DC, Hempton tries to find silence. He visits national parks and wilderness areas only to be met time and again with aural assaults on his ears.

In this age of "conservation" and "sustainability" Hempton demonstrates (in writing and with sound meter readings) the importance of adding natural quiet to these lists.

Easy to read, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking this book has changed the way I listen.

For more information about Hempton's project, visit: