About this title: Diane Ackerman writes a detailed meditation on each of the five senses, seeing them not merely as sense organs but as important doors into the truths of our culture. Ackerman refreshingly combines a gift for lyrical language with a scientist's passion for facts.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780394573359ISBN:0394573358
Description: Very good in good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 331 p. Audience: General/trade. hardcover, light edge wear to dj, text in very good cond, clean and unmarked. read more
Description: Fair. Dust Cover Missing. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Fair. Purchasing this DVD supports the North Central Regional Library. Thriftbooks and NCRL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Library ID found on DVD and case. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Dust Cover Missing. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges and creases. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 0679735666 22231 PB; spine smooth, text clean w/aged page ends, cover has slight shelf wear-allow up to 21 business days for standard USPS media m a i l. wt1lbpf. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780679735663ISBN:0679735666
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. inside mint, teensiest bit of shelf wear to spine ends. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 352 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"Ackerman writes a number of books that accomplish the feat of quality, entertaining writing about science without making it seem like science. Which, I suppose, is simply saying that she brings science to the pleasure readers.
She has a poet's ear for sentences, and she writes like a teacher. Her descriptions are beautiful and interesting, and she read several hundred books for every one title she writes. There is so very much information packed in that great language. Science very quickly turns me off, but this book fascinated me. I couldn't put it down."
"This lovely book is my favorite non-fiction book I've ever read--it's full of stories about famous and historically important people's reactions to various smells, sights, things they've heard, felt and tasted. I love the section about Napoleon and Josephine and how at one point he asks her not to bathe until he sees her again so he could breathe in her au naturel odor which apparently drove him crazy! That's passion, baby! I've read this book several times which is not something I'm usually in the habit of doing unless the book is absolutely fabulous which of course this book is. I highly recommend it, along with all of the other books on the natural sciences that Diane Ackerman has written over the years, especially The Moon by Whalelight--another delightful read. Even though these are ostensibly book written about scientific subjects, Ms. Ackerman's elegant prose makes you feel as if you're reading a timeless, favorite novel--one you never want to end."
"Oops: I just left it in the airplane with a few pages left. Oh well.
My indifference to my loss says something. Ackerman's systematic attack of the senses is interesting and fact-filled, but ultimately not cohesive or exciting enough to keep me engaged.
She does a wonderful job of scattering random tidbits of history, scientific fact, literature references, language idioms, and famous quotations into a flood of the different ways we use our senses to perceive. Though some of these are fun and interesting, there are simply too many disconnected facts to keep it all straight.
The narrative is sometimes beautifully written, but it becomes chopped up by small tangents and footnotes with unclear poignancy or necessity. The alternation between poetic narration and fact-dropping felt a bit too schizophrenic. Finally, some of the poetic forays became a bit tedious and saccharine.
I do appreciate the idea and approach: our senses are all we have. How we blend them, use them, and interpret them is what makes this existence unique. By learning all about them individually we can take the time to wallow in the beauty of all that there is, of the wide array of possible ways of interpreting this infinitely complex universe.
If there is one thing I'll walk away with is the notion of a "sensualist": that is, someone who takes immense pleasure and cognizance in the wide variety of ways of pleasing and tickling each of the individual senses. This helps us sop the most up from what we have around us: an awareness of all of the subtle flavours, sounds, tastes, and flickers that compose our world."
"I guess it helps if you have a crush on the author of the book you are reading. What can I say? It happens. But smitten or not, this was a delight.
The first two books I reported on by poet turned naturalist Diane Ackerman chronicled her adventures in pursuit of rare and wonderful wildlife: bats, whales, penguins, etc.
In "A Natural History of the Senses" she turned inward, exploring we humans and the way we experience our world.
"We tend to see distant past through a reverse telescope that compresses it: a short time as hunter-gathers, a long time as "civilized" people. But civilization is a recent stage of human life, and, for all we know, it may not be any great achievement. It may not even be the final stage. We have been alive on this planet as recognizable humans for about two million years, and for all but the last two to three thousand we've been hunter-gathers. We may sing in choirs and park our rages behind a desk, but we patrol the world with many of a hunter-gather's drives, motives, and skills," writes Ackerman.
"Consciousness, the great poem of matter, seems so unlikely, so impossible, and yet here we are with our loneliness and our giant dreams."
It really hasn't been that long since we were sleeping in caves in family groups.
A sumptuous read about our historic reliance on taste, touch, smell, sight and our sense of hearing to get us through our world unscathed and sated."
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