Customer Reviews

What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a big fan of well-written, witty, evenly paced and interesting non-fiction books. Though I have no scientific background whatsoever, I'm partial to the science kind, and if the author can nimbly jump to making defensible philosophical or cultural points, so much the better. (Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma were excellent examples of the genre; David Quammen's Monster of God a pretty good, but somewhat flawed example; if you like this kind of stuff, you get the idea.) What The Nose Knows fits the bill perfectly for me. First, it's extremely well written: Gilbert has a distinctive voice, a knack for turning a phrase, and a strong and irreverent sense of humor. Second, it's interesting: like most folks, I never give the sense of smell its due, but Gilbert does. You want to know about Hollywood's effort to market movies that smell, or the science behind creating certain smells, or even how we smell? Here you go. Finally, it's evenly paced: there's a lot of information being exchanged, but it's not boring or didactic. Gilbert's like that interesting guy at the cocktail party who knows a lot about something you don't, but has a knack for making it understandable to you without dumbing it down. I give this book five stars, and strongly recommend it.

Many widely-held beliefs about smell are so plausible and so often-repeated that they have become accepted as fact although the evidence for them is often equivocal. In this book, the author traces the origins of these urban myths to uncover what is (and what is not) known about our sense of smell, pointing out soggy logic and supporting his arguments with an eclectic bibliography. These stories are relayed in a cheeky style from the perspective of someone who has seen and smelled it all. Credible pundits are rare and this book is excellent example of science writing for the general reader.

I enjoyed this well-written book, and learned a lot from it. It is often brilliantly funny. Avery Gilbert covers the history of the subject in great detail. Some of the minutiae about the history of smell in the movies had me skipping pages but might be very useful for someone in marketing or advertising. The clinical account of anosmia is better than in most neurology texts. He is a very perceptive literary critic, with the ability to convey the impression of having read through whole books by Faulkner and of reading Proust in French.
Some aspects of the hard science are skimped. He does not exactly explain what Buck and Axel got the Nobel Prize for. There is almost nothing about neuroanatomy and there are no tables or illustrations, although there are ample references. Someone with a serious interest in the field might want also to read Chapter 34 by Dodd and Carellucci, in Kandel's ""Principles of Neuroscience."
The fundamental difference between the way the brain deals with smell and other sensations is only touched on in a quotation (a very apposite quotation) from Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1858. Pheromones are not in the index.
The central puzzle is why we human beings have lost so much of our sense of smell. Gilbert's main answer is to insist that we haven't lost as much as we think. That is one aspect of the problem. It's especially important as a problem because of the strange way humans, especially males, select preferred sex objects. Humans have all the brain structures in place to be sexually motivated by smell, as are the other apes, but this ability got hi-jacked by vision somewhere along the evolutionary way.

About: The science of scent. Topics covered include how many smells are there, categorizing odors, why things (such as pot or poo) smell the way they do, perfumes, representation of scents in literature and visual media (including Smellovision) and how scents affect our behaviors (such as while shopping).

Neat Things I Learned:

* Women's farts are stinkier but men fart more

* Women are better at smelling odor than men and have their highest sense of smell around ovulation

* Helen Keller, despite being blind and deaf, did not have a remarkable sense of smell

* Corona beer was originally poorly made and thus oxidized quickly, a lime's acid neutralized the off odor. Now Corona is well made, but the lime tradition lives on

* If you tell people a scent is relaxing, they'll relax when they smell it. Tell them the exact same scent in stimulating and they'll perk up. Scents are all in your head.

* Sniffing coffee beans doesn't "reset" your sense of smell, it's just a placebo effect

* Some companies have "logoscents." Westin hotels has a logoscent called "White Tea" that they put in their lobbies


Pros: Sources cited, concludes with a look to the future.

Cons: Far too much about smell and odors in the arts and not enough about the science of smell. So much so, that the subtitle could be called misleading.

Well written, touches on the latest developments and offers a good historical context. Got me thinking a bit more about this sensory channel. Would recommend Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent as a good complement.

Gilbert is an excellent writer and adroitly covers a lot of ground in the field of smell. Highly recommended for both scientists and civilians!

This is a great book. Full of insider info and insights from someone who has been in the industry, and has a sence of reality.
Plus there is quite a lot of humor!

An interesting read, and a good introduction to the world of smells, scents and odors.