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Books : Perfumes: The Guide In association with Amazon.com by: Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez List Price: $27.95 Amazon.com's Price: $18.45 You Save: $9.50 (34%) Prices subject to change. Third Party New Price: $14.78 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 668.54 EAN: 9780670018659 ISBN: 0670018651 Label: Viking Adult Manufacturer: Viking Adult Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: April 10, 2008 Publisher: Viking Adult Studio: Viking Adult Sales Rank: 4072 Related Items: The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell The Emperor of Scent : A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume see more Editorial Review: Book Description: The first book of its kind: a definitive guide to the world of perfume Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are experts in the world of scent. Turin, a renowned scientist, and Sanchez, a longtime perfume critic, have spent years sniffing the world's most elegant and beautiful--as well as some truly terrible--perfumes. In Perfumes: The Guide, they combine their talents and experience to review more than twelve hundred fragrances, separating the divine from the good from the monumentally awful. Through witty, irreverent, and illuminating prose, the reviews in Perfumes not only provide consumers with an essential guide to shopping for fragrance, but also make for a unique reading experience. Perfumes features introductions to women's and men's fragrances and an informative "frequently asked questions" section including: What is the difference between eau de toilette and perfume? How long can I keep perfume before it goes bad? What's better: splash bottles or spray atomizers? What are perfumes made of? Should I change my fragrance each season? Perfumes: The Guide is an authoritative, one-of-a-kind book that will do for fragrance what Robert Parker's books have done for wine. Beautifully designed and elegantly illustrated, this book will be the perfect gift for collectors and anyone who's ever had an interest in the fascinating subject of perfume. Picking a Perfect Perfume For Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez tested nearly 1,500 fragrances--some glorious, some foul. Here they offer some humble advice on finding something worth loving among the stinkers. 1. Smell top to bottom Perfumes usually unfold in three (often very different) stages: the sparkling first few minutes are the fragrance's top note, followed by its true personality, known as the heart note, and ending with the base note, aka the drydown, hours later. Something you love at the counter you may loathe by the parking lot. We recommend top-to-bottom tests on skin and on paper, since some scents that disappoint on the heat of skin may shine on your shirtsleeve. 2. Write it down Bring a pen to write names on paper test strips, so you're not in anguish hours later, trying to recall which is the third scent from the left that transports you to Shangri-La. Keep a cheap, possibly extremely trashy paperback on hand, so you can store strips between pages to keep them separate. 3. Rest your nose Noses tune out, which is why you can smell your friends' homes but not your own. Smell no more than five scents per day on paper strips and try on only the best one or two, to keep your nose reliable. 4. Check the radiance To get a good sense of how the perfume will smell to other people as you walk past, try spraying a test strip and leaving it in the room while you step out for a bit. Come back fifteen minutes later and breathe in: that's the radiance. Customer Reviews Average Rating: Rating: - Only a scratch-n-sniff section could have made this book better... Isn't the first movement of Brahm's 2nd Symphony in D Major the most melodic symphony ever written? Or would it be the Friar Lorenzo movement of Prokofieff's Romeo and Juliet? Or Tschaikowsky's 1st Piano Concerto? To the naive listener, a music critic's judgement and description would be helpful. To the urbane listener, such critique is interesting. Often critics will discern something that the casual listener has missed. It is why we need thoughtful, experienced, educated critics. ... Read More Rating: - Oh, So Delicious... This book was a secret vice to me, almost like sneaking exotic candy behind doors, so you will have to share with no one else. I don't know any of the scientific babble; I only know I love beautiful smells. The mechanics of them leave me cold, frankly. But...this book was so compelling, and pure fun to read--of course I hurriedly looked up all my favorite scents first, to see how they were rated. I was thrilled to see some of my favorites with 4 or 5 stars, but nearly reduced to tears (!) to see ... Read More Rating: - Save your money Tentoone's excellent review says it all about this book. I bought it. I read it. I should not have bothered. Go to an online perfume sales company and read the buyer reviews. It's free and more useful in judging the perfumes. This book is a collection of this married couple's personal opinions. Ho Hum. Rating: - Smell Those Sparkling Top Notes! This is a delightful and truly fascinating book. My husband and I took turns reading it aloud (he said, "It's like wine, isn't it?") and it even got him interested in one of the five-star Masterpiece feminines-to-be-worn-as-masculines. The idea of smelling like a Vietnamese beef-mint salad ("Diorella") is just too appealing for him... Myself, I'm tickled by the fact that "Stetson" is a heady feminine floral oriental (in a box bearing a photo of a rumpled Tom Brady in shearling) and "Anais Anais" ... Read More Rating: - Exquisite glimpses into the world of scent This book is a delight to read. Both writers know thier stuff and make a convincing case for taking perfumes seriously, and when not to take them so seriously! They are lyrical when reviewing masterpieces, and deliciously catty when confronted with a dud. I will certainly take this book with me next time I go to the perfume counter. I would have liked some more comprehensive indexing, and it would have been handy to group perfumes by type, rather than strict alphabetical ... Read More see more Browse for similar items by category: Books - Reference Health, Mind & Body - Subjects - Books - Cosmetics Subjects - Books - Self-Help Professional & Technical - Subjects - Books - Chemical Archive - Custom Stores - Specialty Stores - Books - Health, Mind & Body: Self-Help: General