Why read Smell Detectives?

Book cover of Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America

Book description

What did nineteenth-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the nineteenth-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth. Melanie Kiechle examines nuisance complaints, medical writings,…

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Urbanization

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Why read it?

1 author picked Smell Detectives as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Ai Hisano

Author

Kiechle’s Smell Detective shows how smell, the mute sense, has been in fact quite “talkative.” By going back to the nineteenth-century United States, the book discusses how cities back then smelled and how people living there reacted to it. Olfaction is actually a critical source of knowledge. Smell can tell you a lot about your surrounding environment and other people. It also gives historians clues to understand how people lived in the past. Moreover, smell, like other senses, is not a simply subjective, biological phenomenon. Sensations we experience change over time—imagine smell and sounds on the street today and…

From Ai's list on The best books to offer an entirely new understanding of your sensory experience.