This collection of beautifully written essays can help readers appreciate the wonder and vitality of nature.

What would it be like to see polarized light like a shrimp or taste the world with your arms as an octopus?

We need to learn humility and respect for all that developed before us, the beings who can be our teachers.

Every now and again a book comes along that can truly transform how we interact with other animals and nature—how we absorb the world into our senses, bodies, hearts, and minds and deeply rewild ourselves. One such volume is a highly acclaimed collection of interdisciplinary essays and poetry by leading scholars, co-edited by Gavin Van Horn (book co-editor), Bruce Jennings, and Heather Swan (poetry editor), titled Sensoria: Attending to the Wonder and Vitality of Nature.1

In this remarkable collection of writings, you will read about a wide array of topics ranging “from the mating calls of chorus frogs to insect olfaction to elephant funerary rites to the memory-rich tastes of place, Sensoria offers an immersion in the sensual experiences of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling—and their interactions, combinations, and more-than-human manifestations.” Here’s what Gavin Van Horn and Heather Swan had to say about their work of stretching the moral imagination about human relationships with the nonhuman world.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you and your co-editors compile the essays for Sensoria?

Gavin Van Horn: When we engage the natural world, we might do so at arm’s length, considering this animate planet intellectually, philosophically, or as an object. This book aims to turn attention back to the body—all our senses—and our capacities to be in communication with the natural world. The more-than-human world is wildly diverse in terms of other creatures’ ways of perceiving, and their capacities often exceed our own or are totally different in quality. What would it be like to see polarized light........

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