Ratings and awards• The New York Times bestseller• Included in the top 10 best books of the year according to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader's Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside , Publishers Weekly, BookPage• Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Oprah Daily, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal• The book won the Andrew Carnegie Medal (2023) What Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong takes readers on a journey through the stunningly diverse ways in which animals, from tiny insects to enormous mammals, perceive the world around them. Our Planet is filled with countless tastes and sounds, textures and smells, shades and vibrations, electric and magnetic fields, but any animal, including humans, from birth to death is enclosed inside its own special sensory bubble - or, as scientists say, umwelt - perceived by everyone with our senses, only a small fraction of our vast world. In his book “The Vast World,” Jong takes us beyond the boundaries of our umwelt and, together with us, tries to imagine what it would be like to feel the echo of a fluttering butterfly, the electrical charge of a flower, or the hydrodynamic wake of a long-swimmed herring. We'll follow in the footsteps of fire-hunting beetles, turtles navigating the Earth's magnetic field, and African fish filling the water with electrical signals. We will look at the world through four pairs of eyes of a jumping spider, listen to the vibrations of tiny insects and find out that a crocodile’s muzzle is no less sensitive than a surgeon’s fingers. We will get acquainted with the latest discoveries in the field of sensory zoology, understand how sound and light pollution threatens the animal world, and find out what the dog at the nearest pole is interested in. Marcel Proust once wrote that “the only true journey is not a journey to new landscapes, and to have different eyes.” Ed Yong's book gives readers a unique opportunity to travel in just this way. The earth is full of sounds and images, textures and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But each of the living beings joins only a small part of this treasury. Each is enclosed in its own, unique sensory bubble, allowing only isolated echoes of the vast world to pass through.