Books about Enigmatic from Amazon.com

Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But if you cannot smell, does the rose lose its sweetness?

The first and definitive book on the psychology of smell, The Scent of Desire traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with the people closest to us and the world at large. Smell was the very first sense to evolve and is located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation. To our ancestors, the sense of smell wasn't just important, it was crucial to existence and it remains so today. Our emotional, physical, even sexual lives are profoundly shaped by both our reactions to and interpretations of different smells.

Why do some people like a certain smell and others hate it? Is smell personal or cultural? How does smell affect our choices and our daily lives? Rachel Herz explores these questions and examines the role smell plays in our lives, and how this most essential of senses is imperative to our physical and emotional well-being. Herz investigates how our sense of smell functions, examines what purpose it serves, and shows how inextricably it is linked to our survival. She introduces us to people who have lost their ability to smell and shows how their experiences confirm this sense's importance by illuminating the traumatic effect its loss has on the quality of day-to-day living. Herz illustrates how profoundly scent and the sense of smell affect our daily lives with numerous examples and personal accounts based on her years of research.

The wonders of our sense of smell are all explored in a compelling and engaging manner, from emotions and memory to aromatherapy and pheromones. For anyone who has ever wondered about human nature or been curious about the secrets of both the body and the mind, The Scent of Desire is a fascinating, down-to-earth tour of the psychology and biology of our most neglected sense, the sense of smell.

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"Pulling the veil off a highly visible yet tight-lipped federal agency, scholar of governmental secrecy and political violence Philip H. Melanson has created the first definitive portrait of the Secret Service. From its 1865 inception as the nation's police against counterfeiting to the official assignment of protecting the president to the post 9/11 challenges of protecting the targets of terrorists, Melanson and co-author Peter E. Stevens present the agency's history and examine its role in the headlines of our times." "Through rigorous research and interviews with former White House staffers, retired agents, and the first female agent on the presidential detail, Melanson reveals new details about the assassination of JFK and the shooting of President Reagan, along with threats against other presidents; presidential demands on agents and agency funds (by JFK, LBJ, Nixon, the Bushes, and Clinton); alcoholism, divorce, and burnout among agents; the continuing failure to develop a profile of assassins that would facilitate effective prevention; and how the gender gap within the Service has been institutionalized." "Examining the image of a highly professional and apolitical organization, the book reveals the pervasive, often detrimental influence that politics exerts on the Service, typified by Kenneth Starr's efforts to use agents' testimony against President Clinton, and earlier, lesser known episodes." Melanson also assesses the profound new challenges confronting the Secret Service as Congress considers whether to move the agency out of the Treasury Department and place it in the nascent Department of Homeland Security. The authors also analyze how the agency will respond to threats that are escalating in technological sophistication- nerve gas, dirty bombs, biological agents, and shoulder-held missiles. Now, with this provocative study, one federal agency still veiled in secrecy is exposed for all Americans to see..
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"Haunting, cryptic photographs…fire the imagination The images come with no explanation, only speculation, so we are free to let our minds roam wild." —Miami Herald

The wonderfully diverse images reproduced here include many of transcendent beauty and psychological insight, all with the magical, mysterious charge that comes from speculating on the circumstances in which they were taken. Novelist William Boyd, whose introduction identifies thirteen ways in which to look at photographs, explains: "The anonymous photograph…makes us ask, with new concentration, what it is about a photograph that elevates it above the casual and the banal…why some images move and enthrall and remain in our memories."

The number of collectors of anonymous photographs is growing exponentially. Robert Flynn Johnson has spent more than a decade on a personal journey of discovery through what were previously uncharted waters to find the works reproduced here. Reflecting themes that govern our lives—birth, death, love, war, travel, celebrity—these photographs are pleasurable and poignant, giving insight into the human secrets with which we can all identify. Over 220 illustrations..
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Television correspondent, Gert Anhalt takes you with him on a journey through a land where deep-rooted tradition and modern technology combine to form a complex picture of daily life. Zen cloisters and robots, ancient feudal rites and high-speed bullet trains - the seeming contrasts in the "Land of the Rising Sun" delve into the typical experiences of the Japanese. With great sensitivity, the author tells us what moves the people of this island nation, how they celebrate and live. This is with insightful and practical tips for travellers..
Price: $15.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This irascible genius, this diminutive egghead scientist, known to the world as “The Thinking Machine,” is no less than the newly rediscovered literary link between Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe: Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, who—with only the power of ratiocination—unravels problems of outrageous criminous activity in dazzlingly impossible settings. He can escape from the inescapable death-row “Cell 13.” He can fathom why the young woman chopped off her own finger. He can solve the anomaly of the phone that could not speak. These twenty-three Edwardian-era adventures prove (as The Thinking Machine reiterates) that “two and two make four, not sometimes, but all the time.”.
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