About: The science of scent. Topics covered include how many smells are there, categorizing odors, why things (such as pot or poo) smell the way they do, perfumes, representation of scents in literature and visual media (including Smellovision) and how scents affect our behaviors (such as while shopping).

Neat Things I Learned:

* Women's farts are stinkier but men fart more

* Women are better at smelling odor than men and have their highest sense of smell around ovulation

* Helen Keller, despite being blind and deaf, did not have a remarkable sense of smell

* Corona beer was originally poorly made and thus oxidized quickly, a lime's acid neutralized the off odor. Now Corona is well made, but the lime tradition lives on

* If you tell people a scent is relaxing, they'll relax when they smell it. Tell them the exact same scent in stimulating and they'll perk up. Scents are all in your head.

* Sniffing coffee beans doesn't "reset" your sense of smell, it's just a placebo effect

* Some companies have "logoscents." Westin hotels has a logoscent called "White Tea" that they put in their lobbies

Pros: Sources cited, concludes with a look to the future.

Cons: Far too much about smell and odors in the arts and not enough about the science of smell. So much so, that the subtitle could be called misleading. ( )