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I wrote This is Your Brain on Music (TIYBOM) because I wanted to share with others the exciting things I learned about how music affects the brain (chemically, electrically and structurally) and the mind (cognitively). It covered the basics of music and brain science, and combined the two to illustrate all the many processes involved that we take for granted when we listen to music. I strived for a style that was accessible to the educated layperson, but still true to the science.  My editor asked me to include personal anecdotes to illustrate the book, which I did reluctantly.  Some readers say those stories are their favorite parts, some readers hate them, expecting something more like a textbook I think. But overall, the level of the book was well-received by many hundreds of thousands of readers, and so I aimed for a similar approach while writing The World in Six Songs (TWISS).

TIYBOM was a logical stepping-stone for writing TWISS. After covering the basics of science (neuroscience and psychology) and music in TIYBOM, in its final chapter I introduced the role of music in evolution. In TWISS, I wanted to present evolutionary biology in the same way I presented neuroscience in TIYBOM. The basics covered in TIYBOM were incorporated into my argument for music's ability to increase evolutionary fitness, and its role in the evolution of human nature. TWISS took off from the technical and delved into the cultural ubiquity of music, and its importance on a more global scale. In TWISS, I presented six categories of songs (Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion, and Love) that I felt, based on my research, were crucial to human nature, and explained how music was an important element of human evolution. I looked at the role of music in settings such as war, religious ceremonies, bonding, the transmission of information, and love. For those who enjoyed TIYBOM, TWISS would be an enjoyable read and an extension of what I elucidated in TIYBOM.

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1. You really haven't lived until you've seen a college English class analyze your love life.  The students, in my case, were discussing scenes from a book I'd written, a memoir about growing up fat and dealing with issues of body image, family, and relationships.  A grad student acquaintance had chosen to assign it to her introductory lit course and she invited me to visit the class weblog and observe the discussion for a week.  On the last day, she said, I could respond and answer questions.

I tingled to think about it. A lit class! Maybe they would talk about how I explored the shifting nature of identity or my subtle critique of diet culture. Or maybe they'd discover some other brilliant theme that my subconscious genius had woven into the rich tapestry of narrative!  Instead they picked apart my choice of boyfriends.  One day I checked the blog and found, to my horror, that they'd really gone to town on the breakup scene in chapter 34.

"Jeez, I saw it coming," one girl said. "Why didn't she?"

"She's really in denial," another one wrote. "She should have dropped him like a bad habit."

» A favorite on the popular TV series, "The Real Housewives of New York", the Countess shares advice and anecdotes from her book, which examines etiquette and how to behave in different social situations.

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