Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or createan ambience of fear or dread--to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sortinclude the "psychoacoustic correction" aimed at Panama strongman ManuelNoriega by the U.S. Army and at the Branch Davidians in Waco by the FBI, sonic booms(or "sound bombs") over the Gaza strip, and high frequency rat repellantsused against teenagers in malls. At the same time, artists and musicians generateintense frequencies in the search for new aesthetic experiences and new ways ofmobilizing bodies in rhythm. In Sonic Warfare, Steve Goodman explores these uses ofacoustic force and how they affect populations. Most theoretical discussions ofsound and music cultures in relationship to power, Goodman argues, have a missingdimension: the politics of frequency. Goodman supplies this by drawing a speculativediagram of sonic forces, investigating the deployment of sound systems in themodulation of affect. Traversing philosophy, science, fiction, aesthetics, andpopular culture, he maps a (dis)continuum of vibrational force, encompassing policeand military research into acoustic means of crowd control, the corporate deploymentof sonic branding, and the intense sonic encounters of sound art and music culture.Goodman concludes with speculations on the not yet heard--the concept of unsound, which relates to both the peripheries of auditory perception and the unactualizednexus of rhythms and frequencies within audible bandwidths.