The Emperor of Scent: The Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses: Book review, Part I

If you want to take a journey through modern scientific research, the bitchiness of Academe, and learn a little about the biochemistry of smell, this is your book. If you want book candy, don't buy! If you want book perfume, inhale all the way to the cash register.

This book was fascinating. I don't pretend to understand all the science but that's not the point. It's the wild ride through Turin's vibrational theory of alfaction that makes you stretch your brain and limber up those thinking muscles, you haven't used since college biology.

I would kill to have a "nose" like Turin. I'd want to spend my time making quality perfumes which I think would be a neat job for a blind person to have, but alas, I do not have his unique ability to name molecules and such in just about any perfume he smells. Wish this book could have had a sample package of some of the perfumes he describes so eloquently in his guide.

Addendum: It remains to be seen if Turin's theory of alfaction will one day garner for him the Nobel. It took 23 years for the Australian scientists who proved that gastric ulcers were caused by a bacterium to grab one!