The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses
by Chandler Burr
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Used Good/Good
- ISBN 10
- 0375507973
- ISBN 13
- 9780375507977
- Seller
-
Kutztown, Pennsylvania, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
For as long as anyone can remember, a man named Luca Turin has had an uncanny relationship with smells. He has been compared to the hero of Patrick Suskind's novel Perfume, but his story is in fact stranger, because it is true. It concerns how he made use of his powerful gifts to solve one of the last great mysteries of the human body: how our noses work.Luca Turin can distinguish the components of just about any smell, from the world's most refined perfumes to the air in a subway car on the Paris metro. A distinguished scientist, he once worked in an unrelated field, though he made a hobby of collecting fragrances. But when, as a lark, he published a collection of his reviews of the world's perfumes, the book hit the small, insular business of perfume makers like a thunderclap. Who is this man Luca Turin, they demanded, and how does he know so much? The closed community of scent creation opened up to Luca Turin, and he discovered a fact that astonished him: no one in this world knew how smell worked. Billions and billions of dollars were spent creating scents in a manner amounting to glorified trial and error.The solution to the mystery of every other human sense has led to the Nobel Prize, if not vast riches. Why, Luca Turin thought, should smell be any different? So he gave his life to this great puzzle. And in the end, incredibly, it would seem that he solved it. But when enormously powerful interests are threatened and great reputations are at stake, Luca Turin learned, nothing is quite what it seems.Acclaimed writer Chandler Burr has spent four years chronicling Luca Turin's quest to unravel the mystery of how our sense of smell works. What has emerged is an enthralling, magical book that changes the way we think about that area between our mouth and our eyes, and its profound, secret hold on our lives.From the Hardcover edition.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Firefly Bookstore LLC (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 349660
- Title
- The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses
- Author
- Chandler Burr
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used Good
- Jacket Condition
- Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- ISBN 10
- 0375507973
- ISBN 13
- 9780375507977
- Publisher
- Random House
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- January 2003
- Pages
- 336
- Bookseller catalogs
- Biography/Science;
Terms of Sale
Firefly Bookstore LLC
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives mis-described or damaged.
About the Seller
Firefly Bookstore LLC
About Firefly Bookstore LLC
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...