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| The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession | 
 enlarge | Author: Chandler Burr
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.41
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (42 reviews)
Sales Rank: 159233
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0375759816
Dewey Decimal Number: 923
EAN: 9780375759819
ASIN: 0375759816
Publication Date: February 10, 2004
Release Date: February 10, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Convincing But One Sided and With No Resolution May 10, 2007
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is an interesting book until it occurs to you that his claim has not been proved. This is annoying because there is indeed no presentation of the opposing side and so without any semblance of balance we cannot really know if this is valid or not.
 Thought Provoking October 26, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Seldom do we we see a book, which deals with a scientific matter, inspire such a range of thoughtful responses from a wide variety of well-informed, well-educated people, scientific and non-scientific alike.
Frankly, I've enjoyed reading the words of my fellow reviewers almost as much as I enjoyed reading The Emperor of Scent. Kudos to Chandler Burr. Look for his byline in the pages of the New York Times, where he toils as a scent critic. Really. It's riveting reading in the world of perfume. So is The Emperor of Scent. And I'm no scientist.
 A brilliant man brilliantly described...too bad the journalism has a gaping hole. September 14, 2006
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
I really wish I could give this book 5 stars. The subject matter is fascinating, the science writing is brilliant [among the best I've read, and I read thousands of pages of science journalism every year], the main character is, at least on the page, a tornado of charisma and curiosity... But the story is that this intellectual dervish, Luca Turin, the titular Emperor of Scent, is a sort of Gallileo, whose patently true theory of scent [we are hand-led to believe] is spurned by the Orthodox Establishment who stand to lose money and reputation... but the establishment theory is never really examined. This is journalism with a gaping hole in it: the rebuttal never comes.
This is by no means Chandler Burr's fault. As he describes it, Turin's theory is so revolutionary and so inconvenient that he can't even get the Old Guard to respond or rebutt. He was stonewalled. I tend to believe Burr's account, familiar as I am with his writing for the Atlantic, etc., but it is a flaw in the story nonetheless.
That said, this book is totally worth your time. The writing is hyper-lucid and vivacious. Sparkling, really. Burr's intelligence brings Turin to life, and leaves us a character worthy of great fiction. How he does this with such transparent and seemingly effortless prose I have no idea. Outstanding writing. And, at least within the limitations he could not avoid, Burr has done some top-notch journalism. If that rebuttal were included, I think we'd have a classic of science journalism right up there with John McPhee and David Quamen.
Great fun, and highly informative. I look forward to the conclusion of the great smell debate!
Good Science? Good Literature? June 18, 2006
13 out of 24 found this review helpful
The book and its protagonist come off as "bitchy", "effeminate" and "French." On a good day, these qualities might be interesting and even charming in a drop-dead sexy woman who is undressing in front of you. That's especially true if you have the option of shipping her back to Europe the next day, forever. But these same qualities are a bit too much in an olfactory scientist who may (or may not) be on the verge of cracking the sensory-neural code for smell. Frankly, I wasn't able to make it through the entire book given the grandiose portrait that emerged. This story will be MUCH more interesting if it turns out that Luca Turin's fascinating theory and brilliant predictive model end up being correct. If that's the case, then I'll be the first to suggest that we wash him in a glorious spicy and sweet scented bath of vindication and validation. (Somebody else needs to hold the sponge).
Having said all this, I have the strong sense that Luca Turin is an intuitive and creative genius, with the overflowing passion and insight needed to make unique breakthroughs. It would appear that he's using some kind of synaesthetic sense to perceive and describe the olfactory sense. In a world filled with competent but unimaginative nirasas, people like Turin are worth their weight in gold. They forge forward filled with passion, conviction, dedication and vision (or in this case smell). They accumulate enormous amounts of information but are unconstrained by the shackles of convention. The biggest problem for these people occurs when they return to earth with their alien messages. They find a mass of people in a cave, watching shadows, and who do not have a schema for new information. In Turin's case, he's found brilliant metaphors to describe his olfactory dream world, but he is still struggling to present his Martian understanding in a language and style that is acceptable to scientists. He's trying to translate what he knows based on experience into validated, empirical, accepted scientific truth. It is a long road and at times he's a lousy driver. Trying to run Nobel Laureates and other great olfactory scientists off the road is akin to road rage. Good luck.
I think its great that so few people believe Turin's theory and that evidence is mounting against it. I say this now because I'm betting that his theory is correct in general form, and that science will ultimately validate a theory that looks like his. So I'm jumping on the bandwagon now, while it is still is fairly empty. Maybe that means something. I'm no expert on the chemo-senses, and my understanding of smell is highly limited. But I do know something about sensory systems in general, and about frequency-like coding in vision, hearing and touch. In the visual system, frequency-like coding channels are everywhere... in the cones that are differentially sensitive for wavelength, and in the higher visual areas that are selective for spatial, temporal and other frequencies. The ear and it's cochlea are clearly frequency analyzers, with "critical bands" and tonotopic variation represented clearly in the brain. The skin contains frequency selective mechanisms, too, as made implicit in Bolanowski's classic model. As our understanding of haptic perception improves, I'll bet that we'll find cortical detectors selective for tactile spatial and temporal frequencies. Whatever. My key point is that other sensory systems reek of just the kind of processing that Turin advocates for smell.
I was interested in this book because I was interested in his scientific theory more than anything else. I learned about it in the new sensation and perception text by Wolfe et al. (2005). I found plenty here to help me understand it (though there's a reason I'm not a chemist). I'm finding that there are better ways to become familiar with Turin's scientific theory than purchasing this book. Turin's Flexitral website provides the excellent references, including many available for download. The J. Theoretical Biology (2002) seems to be the most accessible, but I have yet to see the more recent papers, including a 2005 book chapter. According to the website, Turin has published, or is about to publish, a book on the subject.
One more thing--The ultimate tests of Turin's model and any decent model of olfactory processing will be conducted by neuroscientists and psychophysicists, not a bunch of chemists. (See, e.g., the new book by Wilson & Stevenson). And the tests will involve olfactory detection as opposed to olfactory discrimination and odor prediction. I'll even suggest the technique. Measure olfactory threshold functions for a bunch of different chemical odorants. Measure these thresholds in a bunch of different individuals, creating a big data base of individual differences. Then use the individual differences to figure out what goes with what. If Turin is right, factors will emerge that conform to his vibrational theory. Simple. See my published papers on individual differences in visual processing.
I may return to finish this book at a later date. That's all for now.
Flawed but interesting book November 24, 2005
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
I found its flaws almost as interesting as the good bits; for example, do you see that your strident defence of Luca Turin may be self-defeating, in fact was that maybe even your intention? I loved the way that reading between the lines of the book you can see exactly how Turin has failed to be accepted by the scientific community due to his arrogance and single minded, almost theistic self-belief. At least that was how I read it.
Another contradiction (or intentional paradox?) is that the way you complain about the unscientific way Luca was dealt with, is itself highly unscientific. Your partiality towards Luca is charming, up to a point, but again the lack of scientific rigour in your book does not do his credibility any good at all. Was this your intention?
Very revealing was Turin's contemptuous dismissal of the offer to do some TV work about the 'supernatural'. He declined this on exactly the same faith-based grounds as mainstream science seems to have declined to consider his interesting new theory of smell.
I found your caricature of the Scottish woman (her funny accent, the 'remote' nature of her home) very offensive. Few writers would deal with a gay, black or other ethnic character in such a heavy-handed way. Perhaps it is meant to be part of your baroque style; I just thought it was silly.
You might want to revise your descriptions of bonding (specifically, how many electrons are shared between atoms in a covalent bond) and of impedance, in any future editions of your book.
Finally, I thought some of the analogies you made were very good indeed. As a Science educator I struggle daily to come up with such analogies and know how hard it is.
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