Perfume: The Art and Science of Scent

The Essence of Illusion

Promise her anything...but give her Perfume. This bewitching, lavishly illustrated book explores every aspect of the fascinating yet little-known art and science of scent, which for thousands of years has worked its powerfully seductive magic on men and women all over the world.

You'll witness every stage of the development of a perfume, from the rose fields of rural Morocco to the finest department stores of Paris and New York. You'll attend a school for perfumers in Provence where hopeful apprentices hone their skills, meet the legendary alchemists who create complex, closely guarded formulas, which can be worth millions, and listen in as executives devise strategies for tapping the 15-billion-dollar-a-year perfume market -- an intensely competitive arena where failure can literally destroy a company.

Throughout, you'll glory in stunning color photographs that capture all the elegance and romance of an art where image is truly everything -- the sensuous shape of a crystal flask filled with amber enchantment, the alluring promise of a whiff of scent on a gentle evening breeze, the extraordinary power of perfume to evoke the memory of a treasured moment. Glamorous, mysterious, enthralling, this is a book as sophisticated and irresistible as the classic art it celebrates.

Newman's investigation of perfume and the perfume industry began as an article for National Geographic, but as she delved deeper into the topic, she found herself writing a book. There are many, many books published each year that should never have been promoted beyond magazine articles. Fortunately, this is not one of them. Whether Newman is describing the science of extracting scent from the natural world, the technology of manufacturing perfume, the business of producing it, or the craft of selling it, she never fails to capture the reader's imagination, both with the indelible detail (a concentrate made from French jasmine sells for $12,000 a pound) and the fascinating historical aside (the fragrance industry in England was launched in 1573, when the earl of Oxford gave Queen Elizabeth I a pair of scented gloves). Perhaps most memorable is the chapter in which Newman describes her participation in a journey to the Costa Rican rain forest in search of new scents. A terrific mix of popular science and culture. Ilene Cooper