There is no better writer than Chandler Burr to take science and colorful personalities to create a great story. In his book, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York, he beautifully captures the egos, drama and fascinating people of that industry and brings them to life for the reader.

This is not the first time that Burr has used his talents to take a complex scientific industry and make it readable. His last book, A Separate Creation: The Search for the Biological Orgins of Sexual Orientation was a must read when it came out. Burr has an a unique way of drawing into different worlds and capturing keeping our attention.

In The Perfect Scent he follows Jean-Claude Ellena and Sarah Jessica Parker as they each create their respective scents. The inside world of finding the 'perfect scent' with all the intrigue that such a process requires is as exciting as a political campaign. We have a ring side seat as we witness two strong personalities making their own masterpiece scent and planning its release. Burr captures the process and gives us an insiders look.

The book which was released this week got a rave review in Kirkus Reviews which stated:

"Split between the twin capitals of fashion, and therefore of the perfume industry, Burr’s account tracks the development of two new scents, each a high-stakes crapshoot. The New York fragrance was celebrity-driven. To create Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely, the actress spent an impressive amount of time with beauty-product manufacturer Coty’s corporate perfumers trying to create a scent that would not only capture her essence (don’t laugh: they actually seem to have done it) but would survive in an increasingly volatile $31-billion market. Un Jardin sur le Nil, the more traditionally designed Parisian fragrance, was revolutionary in its own way. Seeking a higher profile in the lucrative perfume market, Hermès hired Jean-Claude Ellena, one of the professional "ghosts" who actually make the scents sold under designers’ names, to be its first-ever in-house perfumer"

The review concludes:

".....Burr sharply evokes the intoxicating, often infuriating mix of precise science and artistic vision necessary to create a perfume, aided by his impressively calibrated BS detector and ability to unearth the industry’s many dirty little secrets. An unusually grounded depiction of a business built largely on artifice."