Beginning a Diane Ackerman book is like sinking into a hot bubble bath: warm, soothing, and sensuous. After having adored Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses, I’ve made a point to collect a copy of every Ackerman title I can find used: a rewarding task given how prolific a writer she is.
The Rarest of the Rare is a slim (by Ackerman’s standards) volume in which Ackerman lives up to her reputation of being “a hard-core adventuress” by traveling around the world to observe endangered monk seals, short-tailed albatrosses, and golden lion tamarinds as well as the threatened habitats of the Amazonian rainforest and the Florida scrublands. As with all of her books, The Rarest of the Rare is a descriptive delight, bombarding readers with sensory details of Ackerman’s adventures as she swims with monk seals and slogs up the Amazon. Although extinction has always been a natural part of the evolutionary process, the current rate of human-influenced environmental change threatens both biodiversity and the very sanctity of natural life. A rare bird herself, Ackerman captures the beauty of endangered creatures and ignites in her readers a desire to save them.
Jul 30, 2005 at 11:18 pm
During the time she was on the Penn State faculty, Diane Ackerman was a regular customer at Svoboda’s Scholarly Books where I worked at the time. The employees used to have brawls over taking care of her in the shop because we knew that once we started we would end up spending a half hour or more listening to some of the most authentically interesting tales imaginable.
Her books are wonderful and her poetry makes me green with envy at its sure handed imagery.
As an aside, have you read David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous? An amazing book.
Jul 31, 2005 at 7:08 am
I’ve not read any of Ackerman’s poetry, being a “prose person” myself. But judging from that prose, I can only imagine how intense a storyteller she’d be in person.
And I’ve not read Abrams’ book…but it’s on my short list of must-reads!