NOSE DIVE: A Field Guide to the World's Smells

The ultimate guide to the smells of the universe, the ambrosial to the malodorous, here we learn about the molecules that trigger our perceptions and that prompt the citrusy smells of coriander and beer and the medicinal smells of daffodils and sea urchins. Like everything in the physical world, molecules have histories and many that we smell every day existed long before any creature was around to smell them - before there was even a planet for those creatures to live on. Beginning with the origins of those molecules in interstellar space, McGee moves through the smells of our planet, air and oceans, the forest and the meadows and the city, all the way to the smells of incense, perfume, wine and food. He takes us on a truly sensory adventure, from the sulfureous nascent earth more than four billion years ago, to the fruit-filled Tian Shan mountain range north of the Himalayas, to the keyboard of your laptop where trace notes of phenol and formaldehyde escape between the keys. We will sniff the ordinary like wet pavement and cut grass and extraordinary like ambergris and truffles, delightful roses and vanilla to the challenging swamplands and durians. We will smell one other. We will smell ourselves. A work of astounding scholarship and originality, incorporating the latest insights of biology and chemistry and interweaving them with personal observations in a book which is the very essence of being alive. Page 529 goes in great depth into some smells of coffee and chocolate and page 382 the open ocean smell dimethyl sulfide and seaweedy shores of bromine and iodine with the smell of fresh seafood, shellfish and seaweed 'that we take from the waters and experience more intimately and particularly.' Very nice layout in this 654 page large hardback from Penguin books, 18.5 x 23.9cm. Remainder mark.