In Search of Perfumes

This book grew out of a moment in the mountains of Somaliland, where the author stood beside a frankincense tree as a collector cut into its trunk and watched the resin begin to bead. That encounter sent him back through memories of the cistus fields of Andalucia and into the long, largely unbroken story of how nature's perfumes have been harvested for thousands of years. Part travelogue and part history, it follows the people and places behind some of the world's most evocative scents.