A revelatory tour of the animal kingdom through the sensory properties of a wide variety of creatures, Yong's game-changing volume features courting insects, electrical fish, the astonishing eyesight of giant squid and much, much more.
Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for July 2023
Winner of the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize 2023
A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
This is our world, as you've never seen it before.
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 only a tiny sliver of this world.
In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, welcoming us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals. Showing us that in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781529112115
Number of pages: 464
Weight: 371 g
Dimensions: 197 x 129 x 30 mm
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
[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*
Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity - Daily Telegraph
A hymn to the wonders of evolution... fascinating - Mail on Sunday
Yong succeeds in bringing a sense of grandeur to life on every scale - Financial Times
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*
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*
This book lifts the shroud on previously invisible dimensions of the world itself - Economist, Books of the Year*
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
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
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 journal of discovery and animal magic, a sensory exploration that is a joy to read - Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
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
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 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
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
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
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
A whirlwind tour of animal perceptual abilities. A magnificent book - Frans de Waal, author of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist
A wonderful insight into the life of animals and their experience of the world. I would recommend this book to anyone who has more than a passing interest in the living creatures on this planet. Just enough... More
My thanks to Random House U.K. Vintage Bodley Head for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘An Immense World’ by Ed Yong.
This book’s subtitle is ‘How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us’. It was chosen as BBC...
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WOW - Ed Yong, author and science journalist, takes us on a tour of senses and how the animal kingdom widely has developed and used senses. The introductory chapter got my attention very well. The idea of a room... More
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