Registration now closed

Ecology Book Club

An Immense World by Ed Yong

This adult book club discusses books on human ecology, sustainable living, environmental justice and post-fossil fuel futures. Books can be nonfiction, fiction or poetry.

This month we will be discussing An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong.

"The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. 

In An Immense World, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved. 

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” (Penguin Random House)

Email rachel.white@dc.gov:

• For help finding a copy of An Immense World. You can also ask for a copy at the front desk of Cleveland Park Library — extra copies are available for book club participants. (This is the best way to obtain a copy in time to read it beforehand.)
• To receive updates about future book club meetings
• For other information

Registration is optional but encouraged.

If you would like to request an accommodation, please contact dcplaccess@dc.gov at least one week prior to the program.

Upcoming events