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An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, 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. 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 even humans who 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 that remain unsolved.
Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”
WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, 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. 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 even humans who 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 that remain unsolved.
Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”
WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD
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Community Reviews
This book opened my eyes to how other species engage with their surroundings. Yong has a fantastic style, making nonfiction writing feel more like fantastical storytelling. I learned so much about the 5 senses that humans are familiar with, plus a few more that animals possess. This is not only a must read, but a must read again!
a beautiful and engrossing deep dive into how animals perceive the world. impressively organized and loved the chapter breakdowns by the main five sense, with additional senses we don't often consider or about which we don't know much. only reason it's a four star is i lost personal interest in a few of the middle chapters that ventured too far into scientific aspects of vibrations and electric fields. particularly enjoyed the final two chapters that united all the senses researched throughout the book and how humans have affected the animal kingdom with modernization through both good and negative impacts, which was brilliantly addressed. fascinating read overall.
Ed Yong delivers another Science and Nature entry off the heels of his previous masterpiece. Yong is perhaps the best contemporary scientific writer. He is unrivaled in his ability to distill down the most complex topics for the everyone without devaluing the actual scientific process. His narrative style layered on gives this one the read of an existentialist treatise paired with biology.
In this one the get introduced to my new favorite word Umwelten. A concept that we don’t just get introduced to but earn a micro-masters degree in by completing this tome. Umwelten, in a sense is the multiverse of sensory experiences across the spectrum of living creatures. Those sensory divergences underscore the gulf between species but how each experience the physical world.
Another interesting takeaway is how traces a thread between feedback loops between the senses and evolutionary outcomes. In one hand, we learn about how sensory traits impact selection and ultimately outward evolutionary patterns. On the other hand, he shows us how the pandemic shutdowns demonstrated how modern life impacts the sensory experiences of animals and humans alike.
All of the detail Yong shares emphasizes just how immense our world is and make for a massive read. One that I hope gets paired with a Discovery Channel style documentary that pulls in the video footage and visuals to illustrate in real time some of the beautifully descriptive paragraphs we get of sensory experiences. Such a pairing may help remove the anthropomorphism we place on our surrounding world and creatures when the Umwelten outside of our own resemble nothing of the sort.
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