Chandler Burr

In the tradition of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and James Gleick's Genius, The Emperor of Scent tells the story of Luca Turin, an utterly unusual, stubborn scientist, his otherworldly gift for perfume, his brilliant, quixotic theory of how we smell, and his struggle to set before the world the secret of the most enigmatic of our senses.

In the tradition of Susan Orleans The Orchid Thief and James Gleicks Genius, The Emperor of Scent tells the story of Luca Turin, an utterly unusual, stubborn scientist, his otherworldly gift for perfume, his brilliant, quixotic theory of how we smell, and his struggle to set before the world the secret of the most enigmatic of our senses.

In August 1991 newspaper headlines around the world announced an amazing discovery: a difference in the brains of heterosexuals and homosexuals. In 1993 American scientists claimed they had discovered a gay gene. Sexual orientation, it now seems, is not a choice, not a disease nor a faddish whim, but a fundamental biological part of who we are.Chandler Burrs ground-breaking work is the first and only comprehensive look at this revolutionary new science, biology on the farthest edges of current scientific practice. A Separate Creation: How Biology Makes Us Gay takes us into laboratories where researchers are using incredible technologies to discover what makes us straight or gay. From studies of male rats that ovulate and a species of African animal in which the female has a penis, to the political fire-storm surrounding the claim of a gay gene, from a new silicon chip made of human DNA that could discern the sexual orientation of the foetus in a womans womb, to a working theory that homosexuality is a genetic/bacterial condition that could be cured with an antibiotic, Burr explores this fascinating and often ethically ambiguous territory with clarity and an objective eye.

Un año dentro de la industria del perfume en París y Nueva York ¿Cómo se hace un perfume? El autor nos lo descubre de la mano de la actriz Sarah Jessica Parker y del perfumista de Hermès, Jean-Claud

Luca Turin dedicó su tiempo libre a escribir una guía de perfumes, que se convirtió en un éxito de ventas en Francia, abriendo las puertas a la hermética industria del perfume, Turin fue consciente de que, a pesar de los miles de millones invertidos por las gigantescas corporaciones industriales, y a pesar de los potentes ordenadores y de las legiones de quimicos, en el fondo nadie sabe como olemos. Pero Turin un dia encontro por casualidad un nuevo y fascinante mecanismo cuantico... que lo llevo a resolver el gran misterio. A partir de ese momento, se empeño en probar su teoria y en presentarla a un mundo dominado por los poderosos intereses personales e ideas profundamente arraigadas.