Music, what's the point? Steven Pinker has called it useless, with no adaptive value. Oliver Sacks and Daniel Levitin beg to differ. In their respective books Musicophilia and This is Your Brain on Music, they cite courtship and cognitive development among its purposes. Laura Garwin, once Nature's North American editor but now to be found in the concert hall, reviews both books. And with Laura's roots in the physical sciences, it is Galileo's way with a tune that seems to impress most. Other topics covered in the Autumn Books package include the nature of the scientific process, how mathematicians think, toxicity, and lab-lit.