Diane Ackerman

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Published by: W. W. Norton & Company
Release Date: September 1, 2009
Pages: 240
ISBN13: 978-0393061734

 
OVERVIEW

In an eye-opening sequence of personal meditations through the cycle of seasons, celebrated storyteller-poet-naturalist Diane Ackerman awakens us to the world at dawn, bringing into stunning focus a time of day that many of us literally or metaphorically sleep through. Drawing on sources as diverse as meteorology, world religion, etymology, art history, poetry, organic farming, and beekeeping, Ackerman explores dawn’s every aspect from bird and animal behavior, to the incomparable morning light that has long inspired artists such as Monet, to dawn rituals the world over, to the many connotations of the word “dawn.” In prose so rich and evocative that one can feel the earth turning beneath one’s feet as one reads, Ackerman’s thrilling observations—of things ranging from cloud glories to the endangered whooping cranes of the book’s title—urge us to live in the moment, to wake up to nature’s everyday miracles.

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PRAISE

“Dawn Light extends far beyond a time of day into a general celebration of our continually renewed existence. We are not separate from those trees, the author insists; we are always in nature, of nature… In Ackerman’s view, it’s all knit together, this life on Earth, all connected and glorious. And there’s no better time to reexamine it than at first light.”
—The LA Times Book Review

In the same way that medieval monks had “Books of Hours”, with suggested meditations and prayers for different hours of the day, Diane Ackerman’s Dawn Light is a “Book of Dawns”. Each short chapter is about a different dawn and a different facet of nature, chronicling the changing of the seasons over the course of a year, from January to December, in locales around the world. Dawn is also a metaphor for conscious awareness, as in, “it dawns on me that…..” So this book is also about trying to “wake up” to each passing moment. To that end, it is chock-full of small astonishments and secular hallelujahs. Like A Natural History of the Senses, Dawn Light is an exceptional example of the genre of which Diane Ackerman is the acknowledged master—the wide-ranging nature essay that also teaches us about ourselves. It is the product of a mind full of facts, inclined to poetry, and in love with not only all creatures great and small, but every weird and colorful adaptation of the natural world. Joining science’s devotion to detail with religion’s appreciation of the sublime, Dawn Light is an impassioned celebration of the miracles of evolution—especially human consciousness of our numbered days on a turning earth.

“Diane Ackerman is one of our great literary voluptuaries. . . . [T]he writing that results is as invigorating as a lungful of cool morning air.”
— San Francisco Chronicle

"Her gift to us is the sheer pleasure of seeing the world through her loving eyes."
—  Washington Post 

"Stepping into Ackerman’s smart and comfortable shoes, what’s not to like about dawn, with "its ancient thrill of impending daylight," where birds bring news from a far country, we enchant ourselves by simply paying attention? "Morning," wrote Sei Shonagon in The Pillow Book, " — most astonishing."
— Barnes and Noble Book Review

"Intoxicating in its rush of imagery, charming in its whimsical anthropomorphism, “Dawn Light” is also a time-traveling treasury of obscure information. Ackerman whisks us from pre-Christian Britain to medieval Japan and from light-starved northern Norway to north Australia as a “cloud glory,” a fogbank hundreds of miles long, rolls toward the coast. She knows why sunflowers bend, where the Easter bunny comes from, what kind of web a spider weaves when tripping arachnid-style on LSD. Alert and inquisitive, she urges us with all her powers of articulation to do as she does, to open our senses to the “thisness” not just of each new day but of all the hours and seasons of our fleeting lives."
— Amanda Heller, Boston Globe

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Out of Bounds Radio Interview 

Always inspiring, naturalist and poet come together as Ackerman takes us on a personal and philosophical journey via her new book, “Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day.“
Listen