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  • Published: 1 November 2022
  • ISBN: 9781847926098
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $35.00

An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER)




A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world - from Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.

  • Published: 1 November 2022
  • ISBN: 9781847926098
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Ed Yong

Ed Yong is an award-winning science writer who reports for The Atlantic. His blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science, is hosted by National Geographic, and his work has also appeared in Wired, the New York Times, Nature, the BBC, New Scientist, Scientific American, the Guardian, The Times and more. He lives in London.

You can find him on twitter @edyong209 and sign up to his weekly newsletter, The Ed's Up, on http://tinyletter.com/edyong209/.

Also by Ed Yong

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Praise for An Immense World

Every page finds the reader mouthing quiet whoa's, as the world she thought she knew opens out into a hundred others, improbable, strange, and fabulous.

Mary Roach, author of Fuzz and Stiff

A cornucopia of wonders... a fascinating reminder of the humbling truth that most of what happens among life forms on Earth is beyond our ken

David Quammen, author of Spillover

A journal of discovery and animal magic, a sensory exploration that is a joy to read

Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief

A whirlwind tour of animal perceptual abilities. A magnificent book

Frans de Waal, author of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

Magnificent - an unbelievably immersive and mind-blowing account of how other animals experience our world

Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals

An expansive, constantly revelatory exploration of the biosphere's sensorium... Ed Yong is my favourite contemporary science writer

William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and The Peripheral

An Immense World took my hand and brought me on a journey I'll never forget. After reading this book, I'll never look at our planet the same way again

Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed

I love this book. Reading it is a delightful sensory experience... I truly enjoyed Yong's adventures in Wonderland!

Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence

A magic well of surprising, enlightening discoveries about the sensory worlds of other species... A brilliant book, marvellous and mesmerizing

Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds

A stunning achievement - steeped in science but suffused with magic

Siddhartha Mukherjee, author The Emperor of All Maladies

Like stepping into a new kind of Alice in Wonderland. The perfect mixture of revelation, curiosity, science, beautiful prose and buckets full of wonders

Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

A delight... it prompts a radical rethink about the limits of what we know - what the world is, even. It is quite a book. And, I felt, putting it down, quite a world

Sunday Times

Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity

Daily Telegraph

A tour of places that are, in essence, unknowable... Yet Yong...proves an outstanding guide... Beautifully written and painstakingly researched... this fantastic book leaves you wondering what else is left to be discovered

The Times, *Book of the Week*

Both eye-opening and humbling

Radio Times

Remarkable... a delight, a book that prompts awe at the world around us

Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

Yong succeeds in bringing a sense of grandeur to life on every scale

Financial Times

A tour of our own world as we may never experience it

Geography, *Book of the Month*

A wonderful, wonder-full book

Literary Review

Ed Yong's fascinating new book on the complex behaviours of creatures uncovers a universe of unfathomable beauty... Not since Oliver Morton's masterpiece of popular science Eating the Sun (2007) has a book so persuasively made the case that the Earth is greater than we know

New Statesman

This book will reignite your sense of wonder and appreciation for our amazing planet

Woman's Own Magazine

A hymn to the wonders of evolution... fascinating

Mail on Sunday

Immaculately researched, elegantly written, iconoclastic and compulsively readable

The Times Literary Supplement

[Yong's] skills are on full display here, as he clearly and succinctly sketches out complex scientific and philosophical ideas in terms that are understandable for the lay reader

Prospect

An Immense World is an exploration of the ways in which our fellow creatures navigate, understand and interact with one another and their environment through senses. ... The result is so mind-boggling, it's tempting to say 'forget looking in deep space for astonishment'. But let's not do that. Let's continue searching there while also paying better attention to the miracles right under our noses. Yong's marvellous book shows us how.

Spectator, *Best Books of 2022*

Yong ... has a rare ability to break down overwhelming amounts of information into compelling, digestible detail. His An Immense World will make you question everything you thought you knew about how non-human animals perceive our shared world.

Heromag

Remarkable ... manages to be both a celebration of our species' genius for observation while also revealing how narrow and partial our 'sense' of things. Yong reveals how life is much greater than we can images.

New Statesman, *Books of the Year 2022*

[A] wondrous, lustrous, captivating book: Ed Yong's An Immense World... left me awed and stunned - and revolted by humanity's destructive pride and planetary abuse

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Yong's colourful, character-filled writing reveals a multidimensional world that has hitherto remained hidden to us

Guardian, *Books of the Year*

Not just a study of the myriad wonders of the natural world - though wondrous they are - but also a panoramic, complex portrait of the sensory capacities that underpin a multitude of life. ... In uncovering all this, Yong also shows why we should give more thought to our place in the world.

New Statesman, *Best Books of 2022*

This book lifts the shroud on previously invisible dimensions of the world itself

Economist, *Books of the Year*

One of President Barack Obama's 'favourite books of 2022'

President Barack Obama

This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals

The Week Bookshop, *The best of 2022*

Ed Yong's book is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong blends scientific study and elegant prose to transform textbook fodder into an excting read

Time Magazine

Standing out even during a recent golden age of nature writing, Ed Yong dazzles with a deeply considered exploration of the many modes of sensory perception that life has evolved to navigate the world, written with exhilarating freshness

Winner of 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Mind-expanding…a non-fiction foray into the extraordinary world of animal senses… Sensational stuff

Big Issue, *Books of the Year*