Diane Ackerman

The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Żabińskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts....

Diane Ackerman confronts the unprecedented reality that one prodigiously intelligent and meddlesome creature, Homo sapiens, is shaping the future of planet Earth. Humans have "subdued 75 percent of the land surface, concocted a wizardry of industrial and medical marvels, strung lights all across the darkness." We tinker with nature at every opportunity; we garden the planet with our preferred species of plants and animals, many of them invasive; and...

Ackerman chronicles her novelist husband Paul West's heroic battle to reclaim words and mobility and her tailoring of West's speech therapy to match his spectacular vocabulary and unique intelligence.

A collection of poems that tells how such animals as alligators, bats, penguins, bumble bees, and skunks use their different senses.

Diane Ackerman's long-awaited new collection of poems reveals once again her intense response to the worlds of nature, science, and society. Published in time for April's National Poetry Month.