The Smell of Fresh Rain The Unexpected Pleasures of our Most Elusive Sense

by Shaw, Barney

• ISBN13: 9781785781131
• ISBN10: 1785781138
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-09-07
• Publisher: Icon Books

Summary

Smell is the most emotional and evocative of our senses: it can bring back memories faster and with more immediacy than a photograph - so why is it so little understood?



Armed with a hungry curiosity and a willingness to self-experiment, author Barney Shaw goes in search of the hidden meanings of smells. Using plain words to describe what he finds, he investigates the chemistry, psychology, history and future of this underappreciated sense.



Journeying around boatyards, perfume shops and memories, Shaw opens your nose to the world, breaking down "chords" of smells into their component notes and through them revealing new ways of understanding the spaces through which we move.



An investigation into the biology, psychology and history of smell, and a search for effective ways to put into words scents that we instantly relate to, but find strangely ineffable, THE SMELL OF FRESH RAIN includes a 200-entry thesaurus of succinct descriptions of common smells.

Author Biography

Barney Shaw is an artist, and former civil servant. He was formerly Private Secretary for Norman Tebbit and later David Milliband, he was put in charge of the UK's 1,100 unemployment benefit offices, and was responsible for government policy on, variously: Scientology, anthrax, and wartime conscription. This is his first book. He lives in London.