The Emperor of Scent

A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses

By Chandler Burr

The Emperor of Scent tells of the scientific maverick Luca Turin, a connoisseur and something of an aesthete who wrote a bestselling perfume guide and bandied about an outrageous new theory on the human sense of smell. Drawing on cutting-edge work in biology, chemistry, and physics, Turin used his obsession with perfume and his eerie gift for smell to turn the cloistered worlds of the smell business and science upside down, leading to a solution to the last great mystery of the senses: how the nose works.

Random House, 2004, hardcover, 5.19 x 0.8 x 8 inches, 352 pages.