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  Bjørn Berge offers us a treasure trove of insight and reflection. The text sharpens your senses and makes you appreciate the endless variety the world has to offer, which powerful forces are recklessly striving to flatten, homogenize, and standardize.

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  Dagbladet

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  A literary treasure trove on the subject of smell, this book explores the sense of smell with a broad perspective . . . We learn how security, ruin, bliss, fear, longing and lust can smell – and even nothingness has a scent.

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  Gerfried Pongratz, Spektrum der Wissenschaft

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  In his remarkable book Berge begins with a silent revolt: against the primacy of the visual, against the neglect of the atmospheric, against a world that limits itself to talking and showing. [This book is] a philosophy of the atmospheric. An attention to that which does not shout, yet endures.

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  Fairewirtschaft.de (Fair Market Economy)

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  Berge invites us across a threshold most of us have forgotten how to cross — into a world alive with scent. Here, blood speaks in metallic whispers and stone exhales its ancient mineral breath. In an age that sanitizes and distances, this poignant book amounts to a radical act of reclamation.

  '

  Anahita Mekanik, scent designer, co-founder of ScenTronix

Preface
Introduction
1 The Midden: The Smell of Safety
2 A Feast for the Senses: The Smell of Pleasure
3 Heavenly Pastures: The Smell of Salvation
4 A Man’s World: The Smell of Condemnation
5 The Devil’s Breath: The Smell of Corruption
6 The Musk Deer: The Smell of Deception
7 The Liberated Gut: The Smell of Happiness
8 Enter the Eye-Man: The Smell of Reason
9 Soda and Sulphuric Acid: The Smell of Prosperity
10 The Sweat of the Earth: The Smell of Fear
11 The Cast-Iron Plant: The Smell of Class
12 Damp Cows and Shallow Graves: The Smell of Confusion
13 Alabaster Brows: The Smell of Longing
14 Interview with a Billy-Goat: The Smell of Denial
15 The Battlefield: The Smell of Insanity
16 Love Apples: The Smell of Lust
17 White Sheets: The Smell of Purity
18 The Blood of an Englishman: The Smell of the Unknown
19 Hygienic Equivalents: The Smell of Nothing
20 The Scent Organ: The Smell that Remains
Afterword
References
Bibliography
Acknowledgements

Bjørn Berge is an architect and author. His books include The Ecology of Building Materials (2000) and Nowherelands: An Atlas of Vanished Countries 1840–1975 (2017).