I received a book from the Early Reviewers program and the publisher generously sent The Topography of Tears as a bonus book. It intrigued me: microscopic photos of tears for different reasons—How are tears of joy and grief, for instance, different? Newly diagnosed with a disorder that prevents me from making tears, I was even more interested. However, it turned out not to be the book for me. For one thing, I didn't understand all the captions ("Go!"; "As she crossed over the bridge disappeared"; "The breath between laughing and lace"; etc.). For another, in the end, it's really just page after page of tiny tears. I did enjoy the Afterword that explained the inspiration behind the book. I'll pass it on to my daughter, the art teacher. Maybe I'm not the right reader to judge this one. ( )

This book contains photos of an intriguing, almost lyrical subject. Tears produced from a variety of emotions were collected on slides and dried. These are the resulting micrographs (photos taken with a microscope) and captioned.

The results are rather beautiful. The crystalline drops form a variety of patterns and the captions are intriguing.

This book is clearly art, and not science, although the publisher, Belevue Literary Press, prides itself on publishing at “the intersection of the arts and sciences because we believe that science and the humanities are natural companions for understanding the rich human experience.”

The scientist in me longs for more from this book, but then, due to my career, I'm accustomed to seeing astounding micrographs from the world's best scientists. ( )

A fascinating look at tears through microscopy. A bit more art than science, which left me wishing for more detail about the tears and their corresponding emotions. Good for contemplating, but not understanding the mystery of human tears. ( )

This little book is utterly fascinating. Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher has photographed highly-magnified teardrops, and the variation that they present is astonishing. Tears that look like snowflakes, tears that look like tree bark, and most intriguing of all, tears that look like satellite images of Earth's terrain and cities and bodies of water. Fisher explains that she collected tears of all kinds- tears of joy and sorrow and exhaustion. But we don't always know which tear is which. The focus here is on the art of the tear structure and the strange and wonderful shots that Fisher has produced from them, and many images seem to be named, quite aptly, for the vision they present, rather than the emotion from which they were elicited ("What it meant long after a time forgotten," or "Full measure" or "Near the end Tom wrote, Everything is poetry in action if you can love enough"). My scientific-leaning noggin would have liked to know exactly which tear is which, but, on the other hand, I think the lack of precise tear labeling allowed me to more fully experience the artistry of the images and better appreciate the emotion conveyed through visual rather than analytic means.

This book would be a wonderful, unique gift for a doctor, a therapist, a professor, an artsy friend, or really, any human of your choosing.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher, via LibraryThing's Early Review program, in exchange for an impartial review. ( )

This book is very image-heavy, relying on large grayscale photographs of tears under a microscope, accompanied by very little text. Often the "title" of each image is as short as a single word. The sparse presentation is reminiscent of an art show in a formal gallery, where work is typically installed on white walls in a sea of negative space, supported by explanatory text as small and unobtrusive as possible. This kind of design feels very traditional, like a request to view Fisher's work as more fine art than science experiment, and also like an invitation to approach the images with open-ended curiosity rather than a sense of already knowing. The book itself is a really lovely, high quality paperback with a nice weight in the hands and could make a thoughtful gift or coffee table book. ( )