Customer Reviews

The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds

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Ackerman's gift is her ability to capture and convey her wonder, delight and fascination with the creatures that inhabit the Earth. She is equally at home with whales and crocodiles, finds cuddling baby penguins as entertaining as discussing bombardier beetles and thinks nothing of tackling stormy seas and the vertical slopes of volcanic islands to catch a glimpse of a rare sea bird.

In this, her latest attempt to help humans see and understand the "interlocking business of species," Ackerman introduces us to some of the world's most beleagured inhabitants. Meet the Hawaiian monk seal with its "bulbous head covered in silky fur, with black-buttonhook-shaped eyes, a snout on which springy nostrils open full like quotation marks, tiny tab shaped ears, a spray of cat's whiskers, and many doughy chins;" the golden tamarind monkey, with its "sunset-and-corn-silk coloring;" and the magical monarch butterfly, "gliding, flapping and hitching rides on thermals like any hawk or eagle."

Then there are the creatures of the Amazon river - armoured catfish, cashew piranhas, striated herons, sphinx moths, yellow-footed tortoises and bewhiskered dolphins. On the volcanic Japanese island of Torishima, we are introduced to the last of the short-tailed albatrosses and the young Japanese orinthologist who is trying to save them.

Whether she is bushwacking through rainforests, fighting seasickness or summoning the nerve to touch a shiny beetle, Ackerman is always fully and actively present for her reader. Reading one of her books is the next best thing to being in the field with her, and certainly a lot less strenuous. This book is a treat that shouldn't be missed.

Diane Ackerman takes us on a journey from continent to continent exploring the habitat of several rare animals, including the golden lion tamarind, short-tailed albatross, and monk seal. In every case, Ackerman doesn't just observe, she gets right up close, in some cases risking or sustaining injury. She catches crickets, tags seal pups, and presses bombardier beetles to see them spray a warning. (All this is done under the eyes of experts in the various fields.) Her descriptions of the habitats are, as usual, beautiful but real enough so that you are transported right into these remote locations with her. By simply describing the work of those who study and handle the animals, Ackerman reminds us how important it is to preserve what's left of their habitats, always worth emphasizing.

I want Diane Ackerman's life. She gets to visit weird, remote, exotic locations, observe unusual flora and fauna, write about them - and earns enough money to go out and do it again.
In The Rarest of the Rare, she gathers together 6 essays previously published elsewhere; all deal with endangered species such as the golden lion tamarind, the monarchs, monk seals, and others. But she's not just a do-gooder naturalist: she's also a poet, a philosopher, and a heck of a good writer. Some of her musings, the questions she asks of herself, the parallels she makes, remind me of Annie Dillard's nature writing - her books such as Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
It's a joy to share these things that I will never experience through the eyes of such a consummate scientist and writer and human being.
Also, for an entirely different approach to observing endangered species, see Daniel Glick's Monkey Dancing.

Ms. Ackerman creates a lush visual smorgasbord of imagery in everything she writes and I feel this is her finest work to date. If your tastes run toward the exotic and adventerous and if you have a passion for ecology/nature, don't miss this elegant and provocative book!

Diane Ackerman writes with such eloquence. This book was such an enjoyable read, it is easy to forget that it deals with tough environmental issues. The author has collected short stories from many of her travels to various places to witness endangered species first-hand. From the rain forest to a remote island in Japan, she blends the story of her trip with information about the endangered species/habitat and the interesting people she meets along the way. She manages to get us to think about our impact on nature without being preachy, and in an entertaining manner. A must for any adventurer, actual or armchair.

"As we float down the river, we occasionally smell smoke in the air. Though we are miles away from the sites, we are smelling the devastation of the rain forest, smelling the burning of huge tracts of forest. If the destruction continues at its current pace, all of the rain forest will disappear forever in about forty years." ~ pg. 39

"The Rarest of the Rare" is a fascinating account of Diane Ackerman's thoughts on endangered species and ecosystems. I loved the stories of the Golden Lion Tamarins and how they are being reintroduced into the Amazon rain forest.

Whether Diane Ackerman is swimming with monk seals, tagging butterflies or watching pink dolphins she seems equally at home in nature. She somehow manages to transport the reader to each location by painting descriptions in vivid detail. While the descriptions usually focus on the beauty of the locations, the reader is not spared when it comes to the realities of the cruelty in nature.

In these rare and exotic lands animals must still fight for survival. Diane Ackerman is also a survivor. In this book she tells the story of how she broke three ribs after trying to climb down sheer cliffs on Torishima, a volcanic island. As an adventurer she takes certain risks to get her stories and they all turn out wonderfully in the end. Of all her books, I think this is my favorite.

~The Rebecca Review

Diane Ackerman is a gifted poet-naturalist and brings both strengths to her reportage of the wild world. This volume examines a few of the world's endangered species and ecosystems, and the people who are struggling to save them. From the Amazonian rain forest to a Japanese volcanic island to a Hawaiian coral atoll to the Florida scrub lands, Ackerman hopscotches around the globe armed with curiosity and wonder. Nor is it ever far from her mind that there is contradiction in her journeying: She a member of the species and culture that is doing most of the undoing she explores, and even her travel and presence a part of the unraveling of the web. Yet, if there is any hope of saving pieces of the puzzle which supports the earth's current diversity (and, of course, our sweet selves), it probably lies in convincing enough humans that the stakes are enormous. Ackerman is a very convincing reporter. With her you can become entranced with the flight of the short-tailed albatross, so perfectly adapted to the wind that it can fly for months (possibly years) without flapping its wings, or leap through the trees with Golden Lion Tamarinds in Brazil's coastal forests. Her descriptions are gloriously rich in texture and tone, scent and nuance, and she dives right in to the work; banding monarch butterflies, tagging monk seals, and rapelling hazardous cliffs to count nesting birds (which resulted in three seriously broken author-ribs). As I notedd in my review of Ackerman's best-selling A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES (Vintage Books, 1991), that volume offered "a delicious jacuzzi-soak in each of the five nerve groupings we call smell, touch, taste, hearing and sight." Here she does it again.

This is one of my favorite books for many reasons: it's heartfelt, knowledgable, deeply respectful of the animals and landscapes she knows personally, enviromentally conscientious, and written in unforgettable language. I don't know which I admire more-- her integrity, her passion, or the poetry of her language. I've read and reread it and will read it again.

I suggest Ackerman peruse air photography documentation of the industrial clear cutting of old growth forests to see how well nature can "take care of itself" which Donna Seaman of Booklist approvingly quotes, otherwise this book is only Ackerman's embarrassing self-gratification.