An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By: Ed Yong

Narrated by: Ed Yong

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong

“One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal

A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

Mind-bending thrill ride through nature

This is the best science book I've ever read and a "top 5" all-time book for me. The author's description of the peripatetic otter; the fire seeking bugs that can sense fire from 80 miles away; the hatchlings that hatch early when a snake begins feeding give me a deeper appreciation of Creation than I'd ever glimpsed before. I'm now tempted to read other Ed Yong books.

Interesting but very detailed

Enjoyed it at times and at other times it was just too much detail and I got bored.

❤️

Love. You will come away with a new way of seeing the world of animals.

A Must-Read! For the well-being of animals all.

Ed Yong's incredible research ... he weaves it into a web of discovery, richness, hope, and some very necessary urgency. Can't put it down!

Great book!

If you have an interest in biology/the natural world I would highly recommend this book. Lends itself well to some deeper thoughts (ie sensing/perception is not a passive act; mankind’s unique abilities that render us responsible; other realms co-existing within our own) and is also jam packed with cool animal facts. I loved this book more than any I’ve read in a long time. As someone who worked in a lab on lobsters’ neural network, and who is fairly well versed in neurobiology as well as random animal facts (as they are my childrens’ endless passion), I found tons and tons of new information to be fascinated by, and loved the way Ed Young helped the listener visualize it.