| Author Website Page |
| Diane Ackerman |
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| Copyright 2008 © Barry M. Baker, Canines-and-Felines.com |
Diane Ackerman was born in Waukegan, Illinois.
She received an M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. from
Cornell University. Her works of nonfiction
include, most recently,The Zookeeper's Wife,
narrative nonfiction about one of the most
successful hideouts of World War II, a tale of
people, animals, and subversive acts of
compassion; An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of
the brain based on the latest neuroscience;
Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My
Garden; Deep Play, which considers play,
creativity, and our need for transcendence; A
Slender Thread, about her work as a crisisline
counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The
Moon by Whale Light, in which she explores the
plight and fascination of endangered animals; A
Natural History of Love; On Extended Wings, her
memoir of flying; and the bestseller A Natural
History of the Senses.
She received an M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. from
Cornell University. Her works of nonfiction
include, most recently,The Zookeeper's Wife,
narrative nonfiction about one of the most
successful hideouts of World War II, a tale of
people, animals, and subversive acts of
compassion; An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of
the brain based on the latest neuroscience;
Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My
Garden; Deep Play, which considers play,
creativity, and our need for transcendence; A
Slender Thread, about her work as a crisisline
counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The
Moon by Whale Light, in which she explores the
plight and fascination of endangered animals; A
Natural History of Love; On Extended Wings, her
memoir of flying; and the bestseller A Natural
History of the Senses.
Ackerman journeys in search of monarch butterflies and
short-tailed albatrosses, monk seals and golden lion tamarin
monkeys: the world's rarest creatures and their vanishing
habitats. She delivers a rapturous celebration of other species
that is also a warning to our own. Traveling from the Amazon rain
forest to a forbidding island off the coast of Japan, enduring
everything from broken ribs to a beating by an irate seal,
Ackerman reveals her subjects in all their splendid particularity.
She shows us how they feed, mate, and migrate. She
eavesdrops on their class and courtship dances. She pays
tribute to the men and women hwo have deoted their lives to
saving them.
short-tailed albatrosses, monk seals and golden lion tamarin
monkeys: the world's rarest creatures and their vanishing
habitats. She delivers a rapturous celebration of other species
that is also a warning to our own. Traveling from the Amazon rain
forest to a forbidding island off the coast of Japan, enduring
everything from broken ribs to a beating by an irate seal,
Ackerman reveals her subjects in all their splendid particularity.
She shows us how they feed, mate, and migrate. She
eavesdrops on their class and courtship dances. She pays
tribute to the men and women hwo have deoted their lives to
saving them.
Diane also writes
nature books for
children: Animal Sense;
Monk Seal Hideaway;
and Bats: Shadows in
the Night.
nature books for
children: Animal Sense;
Monk Seal Hideaway;
and Bats: Shadows in
the Night.
The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds
From Kirkus Reviews
Fresh and most likable nature essays, first seen in The New Yorker in different
versions. Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses, 1990, etc.) sits at dusk in
Mexico at the mouth of a cave. In a moment, 20 million bats will rise and fly to their
night's feeding. At her side is Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International
(``I could probably raise ten times as much money if I promised people I'd get rid of
all the bats in their area...''). Ackerman jeeps across Texas's Big Bend with him as he
photographs bats and speaks of such species as the tube-nosed fruit bat, whose
elongated nostrils look like party favors. He explains how bats are essential in the
life-histories of avocados, bananas, dates, figs, peaches, and tequila. Nevertheless,
they are systematically exterminated; Australia's government, for example, has
managed to kill 99% of their flying foxes (a large bat with a foxlike face). Ackerman
next visits a gator farm in St. Augustine, where she helps determine the reptiles' sex
by putting her finger in their cloaca--a cavity in which the sex organs lie. Discovering
that females have a clitoris, she asks, ``Does this mean that they can have an
orgasm?'' But nobody knows--she's reached the limits of science. Flying to Maui, she
is the guest of Roger Payne, the world's most faithful recorder of humpback whale
songs. From him she learns that there are 35 known singers, and that the music is
quite complex at first listen, but becomes monotonous over a season: all whales
sing the same song, which evolves slowly year to year. Ackerman's evocation of a
whale song shows her agile descriptive power: ``Then a trumpeting sound...surged
into a two- stage grunt...followed by a stuttering lawn mower that changed from a
finger being drawn across a taut balloon, then a suite of basso groans and a badly
oiled garden gate creaking open.'' A choice treat for both nature lovers and general
readers. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text
refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Fresh and most likable nature essays, first seen in The New Yorker in different
versions. Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses, 1990, etc.) sits at dusk in
Mexico at the mouth of a cave. In a moment, 20 million bats will rise and fly to their
night's feeding. At her side is Merlin Tuttle, founder of Bat Conservation International
(``I could probably raise ten times as much money if I promised people I'd get rid of
all the bats in their area...''). Ackerman jeeps across Texas's Big Bend with him as he
photographs bats and speaks of such species as the tube-nosed fruit bat, whose
elongated nostrils look like party favors. He explains how bats are essential in the
life-histories of avocados, bananas, dates, figs, peaches, and tequila. Nevertheless,
they are systematically exterminated; Australia's government, for example, has
managed to kill 99% of their flying foxes (a large bat with a foxlike face). Ackerman
next visits a gator farm in St. Augustine, where she helps determine the reptiles' sex
by putting her finger in their cloaca--a cavity in which the sex organs lie. Discovering
that females have a clitoris, she asks, ``Does this mean that they can have an
orgasm?'' But nobody knows--she's reached the limits of science. Flying to Maui, she
is the guest of Roger Payne, the world's most faithful recorder of humpback whale
songs. From him she learns that there are 35 known singers, and that the music is
quite complex at first listen, but becomes monotonous over a season: all whales
sing the same song, which evolves slowly year to year. Ackerman's evocation of a
whale song shows her agile descriptive power: ``Then a trumpeting sound...surged
into a two- stage grunt...followed by a stuttering lawn mower that changed from a
finger being drawn across a taut balloon, then a suite of basso groans and a badly
oiled garden gate creaking open.'' A choice treat for both nature lovers and general
readers. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text
refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures
Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales
Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales
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