NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A "thrilling" (The New York Times),
"dazzling" (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different
ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and
forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize-winning science
journalist Ed Yong
"One of this year's finest works of narrative nonfiction."--Oprah
Daily
**ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader's
Digest, Chicago Public Library, *Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The
Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine,
Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian,
She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells
and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal,
including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble,
perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own
senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of
electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter
beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's
magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and
even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's
scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a
giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the
inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have
complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear
in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories
of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many
mysteries that remain unsolved.
Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense
World takes us on what Marcel Proust called "the only true voyage . . .
not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes."
**
WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL - FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE -
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD - LONGLISTED FOR
THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD**
