Aristotle said we have five senses. Neuroscientists now think the real number may be closer to thirty - from chronoception, our mysterious internal clock, to interoception, the conversation our organs are constantly having with our brains. Three decades on from her cult bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman returns to find that science has been quietly dismantling everything we thought we knew about perception.





In A Feast in Every Sense, Ackerman takes us swimming with manatees who see with their skin, inside research labs where scientists are regrowing the microscopic hairs that give us hearing, and into a bedroom where a Scottish nurse smelt her husband's Parkinson's disease a decade before his diagnosis. She explores the sensory signatures of outer space, the hidden scent receptors in our hearts and sperm cells, and a blind man who navigates city streets by echolocation. At a time when screens are steadily starving our natural senses, this is a book that will make you feel startlingly, exuberantly alive.



Diane Ackerman is a poet, essayist and naturalist who has spent her career at the intersection of science and literature, and is widely regarded as one of the writers who invented literary popular science as a genre. Her books - among them A Natural History of the Senses, The Zookeeper's Wife and The Human Age - have sold millions of copies worldwide, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and been adapted for PBS and cinema. In 2022, she received the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, awarded to individuals who have made significant contributions to bridging the arts and sciences; previous winners include Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Eno.