Part 2 of our “Staff Picks” series for National Book Blitz Month
An Immense World, by Ed Yong, is a rare book with the potential to change how you perceive the world around you, especially the natural world. This might seem like a bold claim, but I think it’s true.
Since its publication in 2022, this book has been impactful for many readers. It won multiple awards in nonfiction that year and appeared on more than 20 “Best Books of 2022” lists.
Ed Yong, the author, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose engaging storytelling connects key facts, educating the reader while also being entertaining. Yong’s quick pacing kept me reading as he moved from one fascinating creature to another.
The subtitle of An Immense World sums up the book nicely: “How animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us.” For me, this book pulled back a curtain on a world I was largely unaware of. Yong organizes the book into chapters that explore various senses, such as smell and taste, sound, and heat, along with categories I had never considered, like contact and flow, echoes, and electric and magnetic fields.
Yong begins the book with a topic many will find relatable—dogs! I quickly learned how differently my dogs experience the world compared to me. He provides examples of some of the feats they can accomplish with their sense of smell, such as “finding buried bones at archaeological sites…uncovering lingering oil pollution on beaches…detecting turtle nests so that the eggs can be protected.”
In fact, smell defines a dog’s world so thoroughly that dogs who are not allowed to smell regularly can develop behavioral problems. Yong cites a study that found dogs who engaged in regular nose work became more optimistic after just two weeks. This opened my eyes to the importance of allowing time and space for my dogs to sniff and smell the world around them.
For someone without a background in biology, it can be easy to view nature through an anthropocentric lens. Yong’s book helps to shift this perspective by revealing a vast world beyond human perception. The many living creatures around us each experience the world in diverse and equally vibrant ways.
While I loved the entire book, I especially enjoyed the section on echolocation, which included bats. As a nature lover from Indiana, I have always admired bats and knew they used echolocation to navigate. However, I had no idea of the extent to which this sense enriches their experience of the world.
Importantly, Yong closes the book by discussing how humans are degrading the world for creatures that rely on these different senses. He examines the impact of noise and light pollution on migrating birds, bats, and insects, and considers how we might reduce these forms of pollution to coexist more harmoniously with wildlife.
If you enjoy learning about wildlife and are curious about how animals experience the world, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
David Barickman
Development Systems Manager