A Natural History of the Senses

A Natural History of the Senses PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307763315
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth. “Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.” —The New York Times

A Natural History of the Senses

A Natural History of the Senses PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307763315
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book

Book Description
Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth. “Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.” —The New York Times

A Natural History of the Senses

A Natural History of the Senses PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679735666
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book

Book Description
Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth. “Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.” —The New York Times

A Natural History of Love

A Natural History of Love PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307763323
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
The bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses now explores the allure of adultery, the appeal of aphrodisiacs, and the cult of the kiss. Enchantingly written and stunningly informed, this "audaciously brilliant romp through the world of romantic love" (Washington Post Book World) is the next best thing to love itself.

A History of the Senses

A History of the Senses PDF Author: Robert Jütte
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 074562958X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Jutte charts the development of our attitudes and relationships to our senses from antiquity through to the 20th century, creating a tapestry of different traditions, images, metaphors, and ideas that have survived through time.

Deep Play

Deep Play PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307763331
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The national bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses tackles the realm of creativity, by exploring one of the most essential aspects of our characters: the ability to play. "Deep play" is that more intensified form of play that puts us in a rapturous mood and awakens the most creative, sentient, and joyful aspects of our inner selves. As Diane Ackerman ranges over a panoply of artistic, spiritual, and athletic activities, from spiritual rapture through extreme sports, we gain a greater sense of what it means to be "in the moment" and totally, transcendentally human. Keenly perceived and written with poetic exuberance, Deep Play enlightens us by revealing the manifold ways we can enhance our lives.

Cultivating Delight

Cultivating Delight PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060505362
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In the mode of her bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman celebrates the sensory pleasures of her garden through the seasons. Whether she is deadheading flowers or glorying in the profusion of roses, offering sugar water to a hummingbird or studying the slug, she welcomes the unexpected drama and extravagance as well as the sanctuary her garden offers. Written in sensuous, lyrical prose, Cultivating Delight is a hymn to nature and to the pleasure we take in it.

One Hundred Names for Love

One Hundred Names for Love PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393341747
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
No other writer can blend the science of the brain with the love of language like Diane Ackerman. In this extraordinary memoir, she opens a window into the experience of wordlessness--the language paralysis called aphasia. In narrating the recovery of her husband, Paul West, from a stroke that reduced his vast vocabulary to a single syllable, she evokes the joy and mystery of the brain's ability to find and connect words. Deeply rewarding to readers of all kinds, Ackerman has given us a literary love story, accessible insight into the science and medicine of brain injury, and invaluable spiritual sustenance in the face of life's myriad physical sufferings.

A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity

A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity PDF Author: Jerry Toner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474232981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The ancient world used the senses to express an enormous range of cultural meanings. Indeed the senses were functionally significant in all aspects of ancient life, often in ways that were complex and interconnected. Antiquity was also a period where the senses were experienced vividly: cities stank, statues were brightly painted and literature made full use of sensory imagery to create its effects. In a steeply hierarchical world, with vast differences between the landed wealthy, the poor and the slaves, the senses played a key role in establishing and maintaining boundaries between social groups; but the use of the senses in the ancient world was not static. New religions, such as Christianity, developed their own way of using the senses, acquiring unique forms of sensory-related symbolism in processes which were slow and often contested. The aim of this volume is to provide an overview of these structures and developments and to show how their study can yield a more nuanced understanding of the ancient world. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity presents essays on the following topics: the social life of the senses; urban sensations; the senses in the marketplace; the senses in religion; the senses in philosophy and science; medicine and the senses; the senses in literature; art and the senses; and sensory media.

The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses

The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses PDF Author: Carolyn Purnell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393249360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch—as they were celebrated during the Enlightenment and as they are perceived today. Blindfolding children from birth? Playing a piano made of live cats? Using tobacco to cure drowning? Wearing “flea”-colored clothes? These actions may seem odd to us, but in the eighteenth century, they made perfect sense. As often as we use our senses, we rarely stop to think about their place in history. But perception is not dependent on the body alone. Carolyn Purnell persuasively shows that, while our bodies may not change dramatically, the way we think about the senses and put them to use has been rather different over the ages. Journeying through the past three hundred years, Purnell explores how people used their senses in ways that might shock us now. And perhaps more surprisingly, she shows how many of our own ways of life are a legacy of this earlier time. The Sensational Past focuses on the ways in which small, peculiar, and seemingly unimportant facts open up new ways of thinking about the past. You will explore the sensory worlds of the Enlightenment, learning how people in the past used their senses, understood their bodies, and experienced the rapidly shifting world around them. In this smart and witty work, Purnell reminds us of the value of daily life and the power of the smallest aspects of existence using culinary history, fashion, medicine, music, and many other aspects of Enlightenment life.

Smell and the Ancient Senses

Smell and the Ancient Senses PDF Author: Mark Bradley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317565827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
From flowers and perfumes to urban sanitation and personal hygiene, smell—a sense that is simultaneously sublime and animalistic—has played a pivotal role in western culture and thought. Greek and Roman writers and thinkers lost no opportunity to connect the smells that bombarded their senses to the social, political and cultural status of the individuals and environments that they encountered: godly incense and burning sacrifices, seductive scents, aromatic cuisines, stinking bodies, pungent farmyards and festering back-streets. The cultural study of smell has largely focused on pollution, transgression and propriety, but the olfactory sense came into play in a wide range of domains and activities: ancient medicine and philosophy, religion, botany and natural history, erotic literature, urban planning, dining, satire and comedy—where odours, aromas, scents and stenches were rich and versatile components of the ancient sensorium. The first comprehensive introduction to the role of smell in the history, literature and society of classical antiquity, Smell and the Ancient Senses explores and probes the ways that the olfactory sense can contribute to our perceptions of ancient life, behaviour, identity and morality.