9780060825379 |
(hardcover |
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alk. |
paper) |
0060825375 |
alk, |
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Summary
Summary
Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But if you cannot smell, does the rose lose its sweetness?
The first and definitive book on the psychology of smell, The Scent of Desire traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with the people closest to us and the world at large. Smell was the very first sense to evolve and is located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation. To our ancestors, the sense of smell wasn't just important, it was crucial to existence and it remains so today. Our emotional, physical, even sexual lives are profoundly shaped by both our reactions to and interpretations of different smells.
Why do some people like a certain smell and others hate it? Is smell personal or cultural? How does smell affect our choices and our daily lives? Rachel Herz explores these questions and examines the role smell plays in our lives, and how this most essential of senses is imperative to our physical and emotional well-being. Herz investigates how our sense of smell functions, examines what purpose it serves, and shows how inextricably it is linked to our survival. She introduces us to people who have lost their ability to smell and shows how their experiences confirm this sense's importance by illuminating the traumatic effect its loss has on the quality of day-to-day living. Herz illustrates how profoundly scent and the sense of smell affect our daily lives with numerous examples and personal accounts based on her years of research.
The wonders of our sense of smell are all explored in a compelling and engaging manner, from emotions and memory to aromatherapy and pheromones. For anyone who has ever wondered about human nature or been curious about the secrets of both the body and the mind, The Scent of Desire is a fascinating, down-to-earth tour of the psychology and biology of our most neglected sense, the sense of smell.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-According to Herz, most odors are regarded as good or bad because of emotional or cultural associations, and none are universally experienced as one or the other. The author is recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the sense of smell, and in this book she takes a look at its physiology and psychology. The text is filled with interesting anecdotes and intriguing scientific studies about smell and its relation to human health and well-being. Herz hops around from subject to subject and has a few annoying habits (like referring to researchers she knows by their first names and researchers she doesn't know by their last names), but the volume is compelling nonetheless. Teens with an interest in psychology or biology will find this a readable source of fascinating facts.-Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Herz, a Brown University professor specializing in the psychology of smell, demonstrates that this sense is vital to our well being-so important to mental and physical health that its loss can drive some people to suicide. Herz explores the relationships between scent, emotion and behavior, emphasizing that scent is an important component of sexual attraction and thus crucial for the survival of our species. Many intriguing facts enliven her book. For example, scents are intimately connected to memory and can be used as memory aids; olfaction shuts down while we are asleep; newborns and their mothers recognize each other by their scent. Herz debunks the mystique of aromatherapy, which she says is effective because of our emotional associations with scents rather than because of any direct action of the scent. Emerging technologies of scent, such as electronic noses that can sniff out terrorists, breath analyzers that can detect diseases and marketing theories based on scents, are given a chapter, but Herz admits that she would rather see the development of technologies to restore the sense of smell to people who have lost it, because for her, scent "is essential to our humanity." This illuminating book argues convincingly that the sense of smell should never be taken for granted. (Oct. 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Herz, a Brown University professor whose mass-media appearances have extended from television news to Scientific American, studies our sense of smell. She made this field her career because it had attracted little scientific scrutiny; it also attracted her, as her book will readers, because of the intensity of feeling smell seems to evoke in memory or in immediate experience. Herz's presentation, then, swings between research into the biochemistry of odors and the human psychology of detecting them. A whiff is indeed heavily freighted with emotion, which guides the attraction or repulsion that characterizes our reaction to it. Further, Herz explains, our assessment of whether an aroma is good or bad is socially learned, which underlies cultural differences in smell (Americans like the smell of peppermint; the British hate it). Nevertheless, olfaction possesses innate attributes, such as a signature unique to each person, which Herz expands upon in explaining women's intuition about which guy is Mr. Right. Covering aromatic applications in therapy, perfumes, advertising, and even the military, Herz offers many surprises in this engaging survey.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2007 Booklist
Library Journal Review
A visiting professor of psychology at Brown University, Herz recounts how she became fascinated with the sense of smell when she discovered that her kindergarten classmates didn't share her affection for eau de skunk. Indeed, one of many interesting facts to be gleaned from this science of scent primer is that there is no universally noxious smell. In terms of desire, we learn that women are most attracted to men whose body odor is chemically unlike their own. However, women taking birth control pills prefer men who are chemically similar. Since most married women eventually change from the pill to a more permanent form of birth control, this may be an unrecognized source of stress in modern relationships. The book also covers the "Proust effect" (why smells and tastes can evoke vivid memories), aromatherapy, food cravings, and future developments of smell research. This is one of those all-too-rare books that is involving, well written, and solidly grounded in research. Highly recommended for pop psychology collections.-Mary Ann Hughes, Pullman, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.