Lyrical and analytic, harrowing and hilarious, a page-turner and a
philosophical inquiry, Chandler Burr's THE EMPEROR OF SCENT employs
its juxtapositions to jolt the reader's mind like a whiff of
smelling salts. It snaps you into an amplified state of
consciousness.

At its most superficial level --- which would have been, in itself,
deep enough to make for a satisfying book --- THE EMPEROR OF SCENT
is Burr's chronicle of several years in the life of Luca Turin, a
London-based, Italian-born scientist obsessed with the sense of
smell. Turin, a rumpled character of Dickensian eccentricity, has
both scientific and aesthetic fascinations with scent. On the verge
of proving a groundbreaking (and likely Nobel-worthy) theory that
combines biology, chemistry and physics to explain how smell works,
Turin also publishes a lushly poetic --- and deeply personal ---
guide to commercial perfumes. This is a man who can think of scents
in terms of "7-transmembrane G protein receptors" but then goes on
to analogize them to the sounds of a Beethoven string quartet or
"the smell of liquid summer sunlight." Such a comprehensive
intellect, readers will discover, provokes enormous discomfort in a
cutthroat business and scientific landscape where many little hills
have allowed for many little kings.

Like Luca Turin, Chandler Burr, whose work on this book began as
science journalism for The Atlantic, has the sort of voracious
curiosity that makes him resist approaching his subject from a
single angle. THE EMPEROR OF SCENT follows curlicued tangents into
the academic politics that surround scientific publishing, the
ruthless competition between the small handful of corporations that
creates the smells of everything from toilet paper to Chanel No. 5,
and the psychological importance of scent.

The latter is addressed in one of the book's most poignant moments
(yep, it's poignant too!), in which Turin discusses being upset at
the alteration of classic perfumes: "When the big fragrance firms
take L'Air du Temps and wreck it by having an accountant redraw the
formula to take out the expensive ingredients and substitute cheap
ones, what they are doing…is depriving thousands of people
throughout the world of the thrill of the memories that are infused
with L'Air du Temps, because unless it is the same smell, it won't
trigger."

Burr and Turin make for a perfect pairing of author and subject.
Just as Turin's boundary-transcending insights connect
traditionally segregated realms of academic research, Burr's
writing deftly blends marvelously clear explanations of complex
science with gripping descriptions of emotional drama and sensual
delight. This dynamic duo weaves superficially disparate strains of
information and impulse to create wonderfully coherent wholes. And
they do it with ballsy panache. Here's Burr, after a more technical
explanation, cleverly summarizing cyclopentadienyl-metal
tricarbonyl molecules for lay readers: "They were basically
molecular hamburgers, the two five-Carbon rings like buns with
burgers of the various metal atoms slapped in between…The
nickel burger had a nasty chemical oily smell."

Here's Turin talking about nature versus nurture in the human
perception of smell: "France is a country that
understands…the range of smells that makes life interesting
includes some rather severe ones…When they smell
[Soumantrain, a particularly pungent cheese], Americans think 'Good
God!' The Japanese think, 'I must now commit suicide.' The French
think 'Where's the bread?'"

Like a nickel-Soumantrain cheeseburger, THE EMPEROR OF SCENT is
feast for interdisciplinary thinkers.