What is silence? Is it the space between sound, or an absence of particles bombarding the atmosphere from space? Is it complacency in the face of oppression, a lack of information delivered or received? More importantly, can absolute silence ever exist, and what would this feel like?

Journalist and author George Michelsen Foy found himself standing on a subway platform in New York City, just like many other mornings with his children, but by the time the express trains and locals came grinding into the station, he found himself clasping his hands to his ears, unable to handle the din. This was the catalyst for his search for silence.

Interspersed with personal touches about his life — past, present and potential future — the book is more about the philosophical and scientific search for peace and quiet than it is about one man’s increasing intolerance for the overstimulation of modern life, though that is a part of the tale.

His quest for silence brings him into contact with hearing specialists, sound specialists, monks, astrophysicists, yogis and musicians. He travels to the bowels of the Earth, to a scientific research station located in a deep mine. He visits an ancient monastery in France. He ventures into an anechoic chamber in Minneapolis that the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the quietest place on Earth (minus 9.4 decibels). He submerges himself in baths, travels to the countryside and plops down in a sensory deprivation tank. His research flows from artists, to philosophers, to scientists.

Whether he finds perfect quiet is not the point and would be a perfect spoiler for a well-crafted, if dense, read. But it’s the search that is important here. Originally based on sound, his examination of the concept of silence opens into a larger understanding of what that means.

Silence is spatial as much as it is auditory. It is conceptual as much as it is concrete. It is social and political as much as it is philosophical. It doesn’t just stick to the sense of hearing. It is the distance between individuals as much as it is the necessary glue that binds us. It is the sort of concept that drives men mad while searching for it, and Foy balances on that psychological line for a great deal of the book.

This isn’t light summer reading. Zero Decibels rambles through thick brush. But if you manage to hack your way down Foy’s path, it’s a rewarding journey that will have you questioning every ping, screech and hum that pervades our environment.