Rating: 
Summary: Science At It's Best!
Review: Don's book came at exactly the right time for myself, my wife and my soon-to-be-born son. Using information from the book, we exposed our beautiful forming fetus to the wonders of music and continued to do so through his childhood, puberty and young manhood years. His I.Q. topped 200 by the time he was 21, and by the time he was 24, he had invented a practical method of traveling in time. He has brought me back with him to encourage you to read Don's book carefully if you care at all whether your child grows up to be a dummy!
Rating: 
Summary: THE MOZART EFFECT
Review: For fifteen years I've taught classes on the transformational powers of sound and music. From research on biofeedback that helps reduce stress, blood pressure and headaches to amazing stories where people have been kept alive during accidents while listening to music, I've persued a field of study that is thousands of years old. From beating drums to conjuring healing spirits to magical baroque music that helps people recover from surgery, music is a marvelous mystery.
When I became seriously ill three years ago with a large, inch and a half blood clot behind my right eye, I knew I had to merge the best of western medicine with the cutting edge possibilities of using sound and music to heal myself. Whether it was the miracle of music or the blessings of imagery and a good doctor, I healed quickly. THE MOZART EFFECT came from this experience. With it, comes the full spectrum of the possibilities of music in the future of healing arts. Through your own voice, your style of listening, you too may be able to orchestrate a healtier mind and body by using the MOZART EFFECT tm.
-Don Campbell
Rating:
Summary: Unique restoration of the connection between music and life
Review: For me, the Mozart Effect is a seminal work of great importance. Campbell uses his singular life experience and early exposure to some of the great musical minds of the 20th century to breach the void that exists so commonly between the creators of great music and the audience of listeners for whom music is simply joy. The power of music is a magical, mystical and ultimately very mysterious phenomenon. In the 20th century music has been removed from its primal roots. Separated from the vital level of humanity, much of music's power has been lost. The blessing of Campbell's book is that it is the first modern (non-academic) volume to re-examine the fundamental connections between our bodies and the inexplicaple, compelling and universal phenomenon of music. Much will come from The Mozart Effect. Many will find a new path to old truths.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent source of inspiration and science of music
Review: Here's a well written and inspired book that is honest in regard to the whole spectrum of music's power. Campbell is not afraid of inspiration, spirituality, research or the power of the spoken word. Most books on music take only one view. He has the courage to tell the world how music is experienced and perceived by many people. Perhaps the researchers could learn a few things from Campbell.......that not all people hear and process music in the same way. This book cuts new ground for the arts. Maybe researchers will regard subjective experience as a valid human perception. BRAVO for making me think, feel and listen to music in a more focused way.
Rating:
Summary: Well documented
Review: I absolutely disagree with any reviewer who states that this book
lacks substantiation. The "recommended reading" section is seven pages long and lists several dozen books written by academics, scientists, medical doctors and therapists. The "resources" section is eleven pages long and lists active training and music therapy centers in Europe, Asia and North and South America. The "footnotes" section is twenty-two pages long. This is an entertaining and well written overview of the field of music therapy and would benefit any person interested in expanding human potential. I've been involved in music for twenty-four years including record and concert production and hosting a daily radio program. I've had the opportunity to come in direct contact with some of the world's greatest musicians and I feel certain most of them would find this book fascinating. I certainly did. I also received scientific training as an undergraduate at an Ivy League university (neuroscience at Princeton) and did not find this book deficient in any way.
Rating:
Summary: Well documented
Review: I absolutely disagree with any reviewer who states that this book
lacks substantiation. The "recommended reading" section is seven pages long and lists several dozen books written by academics, scientists, medical doctors and therapists. The "resources" section is eleven pages long and lists active training and music therapy centers in Europe, Asia and North and South America. The "footnotes" section is twenty-two pages long. This is an entertaining and well written overview of the field of music therapy and would benefit any person interested in expanding human potential. I've been involved in music for twenty-four years including record and concert production and hosting a daily radio program. I've had the opportunity to come in direct contact with some of the world's greatest musicians and I feel certain most of them would find this book fascinating. I certainly did. I also received scientific training as an undergraduate at an Ivy League university (neuroscience at Princeton) and did not find this book deficient in any way.
Rating:
Summary: Great for certain things
Review: I am a college student, and i give this book 5 stars not necessarily because of it's content, but because it was great for what i needed. i wrote a paper a couple years ago on music and it's effects on the mind, and this book was an incredible source for me. It's an easy and quick read (I was able to read it in a week, even w/ a busy school schedule), and it has quality information that is easy to understand. Having had no background in music therapy or psychology, this book provided me with what i needed. I understand that this book is pretty bias, and doesnt exactly explore the shortcomings or faults in the concept of the mozart effect, but in all fairness, it does a good job of explaining things in lehman's terms. Therefore, if you're a veteran psychologist or music therapist, this book may be basic for you, but if you are a student, teacher, or a casual reader, this book is wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: The musical references are a mess....
Review: I enjoyed reading this: it has sparked my imagination about the uses of music (my own doctoral degree is in musical performance). I like books of anecdotes, like this one, as light reading. Campbell introduces the field of music therapy in plain and simple language. I read about half of this while attending a family member in the hospital, and read the rest of it in odd moments before and after that. It gave me a few ideas about how to bring in music that could help the healing. But the "science" in this book is a mess (as other reviewers here have pointed out), and the musical references are even worse. There are so many errors of fact when Campbell refers to classical compositions and composers, it gave me serious doubt whether *any* of this book is actually well researched. Titles, dates, spelling, descriptions of the music...easily verifiable facts that are laugably wrong (for example, the author asserts that Ravel's "Bolero" accelerates). A competent editor should have caught those errors, and an author who really knows the field of classical music wouldn't have written them in the first place. The author is content to pull together material from everywhere, without synthesizing it into a coherent argument. That's the strength and the weakness here. This book is fluff, merely a popularized introduction to a field. Don't expect to find convincing scientific reasoning here, or to learn much about music. Just take the music-therapy anecdotes for what they're worth: occasional success stories where people's lives have been turned around by music. The author suggests that almost any form of music can be put to use in some situation or another to help someone through a difficult time, and that's a pretty obvious thing that one would know without reading this book. (If someone is not doing well, encourage participation in some music or movement that the person resonates with; this helps the body and spirit to heal themselves. The participation takes the mind off the pain, gives a more positive outlook to life, etc., etc....anyone can figure that out without reading this book.) Music therapy is an established field; check with the trained experts. This book merely suggests what might be possible. The most valuable thing here for me was seeing where some of the scientific researchers are looking. If I want to learn more about music therapy, Campbell has given me some useful leads in those directions.
Rating:
Summary: The musical references are a mess....
Review: I enjoyed reading this: it has sparked my imagination about the uses of music (my own doctoral degree is in musical performance). I like books of anecdotes, like this one, as light reading. Campbell introduces the field of music therapy in plain and simple language. I read about half of this while attending a family member in the hospital, and read the rest of it in odd moments before and after that. It gave me a few ideas about how to bring in music that could help the healing. But the "science" in this book is a mess (as other reviewers here have pointed out), and the musical references are even worse. There are so many errors of fact when Campbell refers to classical compositions and composers, it gave me serious doubt whether *any* of this book is actually well researched. Titles, dates, spelling, descriptions of the music...easily verifiable facts that are laugably wrong (for example, the author asserts that Ravel's "Bolero" accelerates). A competent editor should have caught those errors, and an author who really knows the field of classical music wouldn't have written them in the first place. The author is content to pull together material from everywhere, without synthesizing it into a coherent argument. That's the strength and the weakness here. This book is fluff, merely a popularized introduction to a field. Don't expect to find convincing scientific reasoning here, or to learn much about music. Just take the music-therapy anecdotes for what they're worth: occasional success stories where people's lives have been turned around by music. The author suggests that almost any form of music can be put to use in some situation or another to help someone through a difficult time, and that's a pretty obvious thing that one would know without reading this book. (If someone is not doing well, encourage participation in some music or movement that the person resonates with; this helps the body and spirit to heal themselves. The participation takes the mind off the pain, gives a more positive outlook to life, etc., etc....anyone can figure that out without reading this book.) Music therapy is an established field; check with the trained experts. This book merely suggests what might be possible. The most valuable thing here for me was seeing where some of the scientific researchers are looking. If I want to learn more about music therapy, Campbell has given me some useful leads in those directions.
Rating:
Summary: This book was absolutely excellent!
Review: I use the information that I learned in this book every single day. This changed the way that I live my life
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