Best Seller
A Feast in Every Sense
Hardcover
$32.00
Available on Jan 19, 2027 | 400 Pages
A vivid and groundbreaking tour of the senses, full of cutting-edge science and thrilling anecdotes, that reveals how they shape our lives and the way we experience the world around us—by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses
“This book is truly sensational—lavish, lyrical, revelatory. These pages make you glad to be alive!”—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
A Feast in Every Sense is Diane Ackerman’s luscious and tender journey into the mystery of our modern sensory lives, a grand tour that captures the heady feelings of being alive. She introduces us to receptors that create the creamy sensation of a perfectly ripe avocado, sound waves that allow us to identify hot versus cold water by sound alone, skin sensors that lower pain and change brain chemistry at a lover’s touch.
The sensory universe colors every morsel of human existence. Why does sitting in a hard chair make you a harder bargainer? Why does Tylenol decrease empathy? Why does sipping a bitter drink invite harsher moral judgments? How does the time of day you receive a flu vaccine or an organ transplant affect its success? Is airplane food really that dull, or do our cravings and sense of taste warp at altitude? What sensory rebels have lived at the frontiers of perception? So many mysteries, good and bad, can only be understood through our senses.
Ackerman also uses new scientific discoveries, like our host of Secret Senses—ever-vigilant scouts—to explain life’s intricacies and understand how the world’s endless stimuli combine with our inner lives to form our deepest thoughts, feelings, hardships and joys.
Blending history, science, personal experience, and a poet’s eye, A Feast in Every Sense is both an ambrosial display of how we process the beauty around us and a call to rediscover what it means to be fully embodied and alive in a world brimming with wonders.
“This book is truly sensational—lavish, lyrical, revelatory. These pages make you glad to be alive!”—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
A Feast in Every Sense is Diane Ackerman’s luscious and tender journey into the mystery of our modern sensory lives, a grand tour that captures the heady feelings of being alive. She introduces us to receptors that create the creamy sensation of a perfectly ripe avocado, sound waves that allow us to identify hot versus cold water by sound alone, skin sensors that lower pain and change brain chemistry at a lover’s touch.
The sensory universe colors every morsel of human existence. Why does sitting in a hard chair make you a harder bargainer? Why does Tylenol decrease empathy? Why does sipping a bitter drink invite harsher moral judgments? How does the time of day you receive a flu vaccine or an organ transplant affect its success? Is airplane food really that dull, or do our cravings and sense of taste warp at altitude? What sensory rebels have lived at the frontiers of perception? So many mysteries, good and bad, can only be understood through our senses.
Ackerman also uses new scientific discoveries, like our host of Secret Senses—ever-vigilant scouts—to explain life’s intricacies and understand how the world’s endless stimuli combine with our inner lives to form our deepest thoughts, feelings, hardships and joys.
Blending history, science, personal experience, and a poet’s eye, A Feast in Every Sense is both an ambrosial display of how we process the beauty around us and a call to rediscover what it means to be fully embodied and alive in a world brimming with wonders.
Author
Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to garnering many other awards and recognitions for her work, which include the bestselling The Zookeeper’s Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
Learn More about Diane Ackerman
