Diane Ackerman is by turns glib, fulsome, and self-indulgent in this widely-lauded exposition of the myriads of ways in which the human organism is teased, tantalized, titillated, perverted, and enslaved by the creations of human artificers. By its title, the reader might expect what lies between the pages of a traditional "natural history," i.e., an exploration of the universe of experience lying outside the realm of humanly-created objects. Instead, one finds a paean to artifice and the artificers -- the cosmeticians, perfumers, chefs and other servitors of wealth who have risen to the challenge of appeasing the jaded palates of the rich. Enraptured by the alchemical illusions worked by generations of aesthetic experimenters, from apothecaries to flavorists, Ackerman, wittingly or unwittingly falls into the role of saleswoman for those who market a pumped-up, synthetically enriched variety of human experience. While Ackerman expresses a hands-off approach to nature, that prevents her from interceding between predators and prey, she shows no such reticence with regard to human beings, who are set upon by those who would complicate their natural experience for profit. An internally inconsistent work, that seems altogether too comfortable with the painful truth that the life of our species and the planet as a whole has been distorted and destroyed by becoming the plaything of the powerful.