I'm gonna plug this book here instead of in "
What's The Latest Book You've Read," not because I think folks here don't read, but because the book isn't strictly
music-related. (Although it's not unrelated, by any means.)
Anyway: I think everybody on this thread--for that matter, everybody who has tinnitus and/or hearing loss, whether it's from a lifetime of loud music or serving in the military or working in heavy industry (or farming or landscaping or construction or transportation or...) or whatever--will be interested in this book, which I just finished last night: David Owen's
Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World (2019).
Beware, though: if you're the least bit hypochondriacal, like me, it'll have you fretting--especially in the final couple of chapters, where Owen lays out why a lot of experts now think the official standards and the common wisdom about thresholds for damage to hearing are
way off. Also: it'll probably make you hyper-aware of your own tinnitus for the entire time you're reading the book!
That said: Owen, who's a staff writer at
The New Yorker, is such a genial and engaging writer, so curious and sympathetic (he's almost 70, and he's a sufferer like us), and able to explain the physiology of hearing and the science of hearing aids and hearing loss (and developing therapies for its amelioration and restoration) so plainly and clearly, that you'll want to push through.
Five years on, it could benefit from an update to account for the demise of the Bose "HearPhones" (which Owen loved) and the advent of AirPods-as-hearing-aids (and a thousand other PSAPs/OTC hearing aids), but it's still a great read.
You can score a used copy pretty cheaply, and (appropriately enough) there's also an audiobook version.
https://www.davidowen.net/david_owen/2019/11/volume-control.html
An interview on NPR's
Fresh Air:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health...certs-our-deafening-world-is-hurting-our-ears
And a promo video for the magazine article in which the book originated: