About the Author

Ed Yong's first book, I Contain Multitudes, about the amazing partnerships between microbes and animals, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the Wellcome Book Prize. It was a New York Times bestseller. He is a science writer on the staff of The Atlantic, where he won the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism for his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Polk Award for science reporting, among other honours. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Wired, The New York Times, Scientific American, and more. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Standing out even during a recent golden age of nature writing, Ed Yong dazzles with a deeply considered exploration of the many modes of sensory perception that life has evolved to navigate the world, written with exhilarating freshness
*Winner of 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction*

[A] wondrous, lustrous, captivating book: Ed Yong's An Immense World... left me awed and stunned - and revolted by humanity's destructive pride and planetary abuse
*Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year**

Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity
*Daily Telegraph*

A hymn to the wonders of evolution... fascinating
*Mail on Sunday*

Yong succeeds in bringing a sense of grandeur to life on every scale
*Financial Times*

Not just a study of the myriad wonders of the natural world - though wondrous they are - but also a panoramic, complex portrait of the sensory capacities that underpin a multitude of life. ... In uncovering all this, Yong also shows why we should give more thought to our place in the world.
*New Statesman, *Best Books of 2022**

An Immense World is an exploration of the ways in which our fellow creatures navigate, understand and interact with one another and their environment through senses. ... The result is so mind-boggling, it's tempting to say 'forget looking in deep space for astonishment'. But let's not do that. Let's continue searching there while also paying better attention to the miracles right under our noses. Yong's marvellous book shows us how.
*Spectator, *Best Books of 2022**

This book lifts the shroud on previously invisible dimensions of the world itself
*Economist, *Books of the Year**

A magic well of surprising, enlightening discoveries about the sensory worlds of other species... A brilliant book, marvellous and mesmerizing
*Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds*

A stunning achievement - steeped in science but suffused with magic
*Siddhartha Mukherjee, author The Emperor of All Maladies*

A delight... it prompts a radical rethink about the limits of what we know - what the world is, even. It is quite a book. And, I felt, putting it down, quite a world
*Sunday Times*

I love this book. Reading it is a delightful sensory experience... I truly enjoyed Yong's adventures in Wonderland!
*Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence*

A journal of discovery and animal magic, a sensory exploration that is a joy to read
*Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief*

Magnificent - an unbelievably immersive and mind-blowing account of how other animals experience our world
*Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals*

Like stepping into a new kind of Alice in Wonderland. The perfect mixture of revelation, curiosity, science, beautiful prose and buckets full of wonders
*Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World*

A cornucopia of wonders... a fascinating reminder of the humbling truth that most of what happens among life forms on Earth is beyond our ken
*David Quammen, author of Spillover*

An expansive, constantly revelatory exploration of the biosphere's sensorium... Ed Yong is my favourite contemporary science writer
*William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and The Peripheral*

Every page finds the reader mouthing quiet whoa's, as the world she thought she knew opens out into a hundred others, improbable, strange, and fabulous.
*Mary Roach, author of Fuzz and Stiff*

An Immense World took my hand and brought me on a journey I'll never forget. After reading this book, I'll never look at our planet the same way again
*Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed*

A whirlwind tour of animal perceptual abilities. A magnificent book
*Frans de Waal, author of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist*