The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us

by Diane Ackerman

Overview

As Diane Ackerman writes in her brilliant new book, The Human Age, "our relationship with nature has changed…radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad. Our new epoch is laced with invention. Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable."

Ackerman is justly celebrated for her unique insight into the natural world and our place in it. In this landmark book, she confronts the unprecedented reality that one prodigiously intelligent and meddlesome creature, Homo sapiens, is now the dominant force 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 we have even altered the climate, threatening our own extinction. Yet we reckon with our own destructive capabilities in extraordinary acts of hope-filled creativity: we collect the DNA of vanishing species in a "frozen ark," equip orangutans with iPads, and create wearable technologies and synthetic species that might one day outsmart us. With her distinctive gift for making scientific discovery intelligible to the layperson, Ackerman takes us on an exhilarating journey through our new reality, introducing us to many of the people and ideas now creating—perhaps saving—our future and that of our fellow creatures.

A beguiling, optimistic engagement with the changes affecting every part of our lives, The Human Age is a wise and beautiful book that will astound, delight, and inform intelligent life for a long time to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393240740
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/10/2014
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Diane Ackerman has been the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in addition to many other awards and recognitions for her work, which include the best-selling The Zookeeper's Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

Table of Contents

I Welcome to the Anthropocene

Apps for Apes 3

Wild Heart, Anthropocene Mind 8

Black Marble 15

Handmade Landscapes 20

A Dialect of Stone 29

Monkeying with the Weather 36

Gaia in a Temper 44

Brainstorming from Equator to Ice 50

Blue Revolution 59

II In the House of Stone and Light

Asphalt Jungles 71

A Green Man in a Green Shade 79

House Plants? How Passé 86

Opportunity Warms 95

III Is Nature "Natural" Anymore?

Is Nature "Natural" Anymore? 111

The Slow-Motion Invaders 128

"They Had No Choice" 141

Paddling in the Gene Pool 149

For Love of a Snail 156

IV Nature, Pixilated

An (Un)Natural Future of the Senses 171

Weighing in the Nanoscale 179

Nature, Pixilated 188

The Interspecies Internet 201

Your Passion Flower Is Sexting You 205

When Robots Weep, Who Will Comfort Them? 208

Robots on a Date 226

Printing a Rocking Horse on Mars 232

V Our Bodies, Our Nature

The (3D-Printed) Ear He Lends Me 243

Cyborgs and Chimeras 253

DNA'S Secret Doormen 269

Meet My Maker, the Mad Molecule 287

Conclusion: Wild Heart, Anthropocene Mind(Revisited) 305

Acknowledgments 311

Notes 313

Further Reading 319

Index 331

Editorial Reviews

Ackerman has established herself over the past quarter of a century as one of our most adventurous, charismatic and engrossing public science writers. Since her 1990 breakout title, A Natural History of the Senses, she has demonstrated a rare versatility, a contagious curiosity and a gift for painting quick, memorable tableaus drawn from research across a panoply of disciplines. The Human Age displays all these alluring qualities, as Ackerman delves into fields as diverse as evolutionary robotics, urban design, nanotechnology, 3-D printing and biomimicry…The Human Age is a dazzling achievement: immensely readable, lively, polymathic, audacious.

The New York Times Book Review - Rob Nixon

★ 07/14/2014
Ackerman (One Hundred Names for Love) addresses a currently vogue topic, the Anthropocene—the geologic age humans have shaped by altering the world’s ecosystems—and in doing so raises the bar for her peers. “We’ve subdued 75 percent of the land surface,” Ackerman points out, “preserving some pockets as ‘wilderness,’ denaturing vast tracts for our businesses and homes, and homogenizing a third of the world’s ice-free land through farming.” Yet in the face of massive changes that have “created some planetary chaos that threatens our well-being,” she finds hope. Ackerman views the efforts of the tiny, deluge-prone Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives to be carbon neutral by 2020 as “a model for changes radical enough to help fix the climate.” Her critical eye focuses on changes at the human as well as the global level: “Anthropocene engineering has penetrated the world of medicine and biology, revolutionizing how we view the body.” The greatest strength of her work, though, is the beauty of her language, the power of her metaphors, and the utterly compelling nature of her examples. Whether Ackerman is writing about an iPad-using orangutan or Polynesian snails whose “interiors belong in a church designed by Gaudí,” her penetrating insight is a joy to behold. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, William Morris Endeavor. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"A book to dip around in—skimming some parts and perusing others with care—as your interest guides you, enjoying Ackerman’s profound sense of mind play as you go."

Elle - Ben Dickinson

"Ackerman is a gorgeous writer and perceptive observer. Here she writes with great empathy about the human plight."

Boston Globe - Kate Tuttle

"With this stirringly vivid, darkbright manifesto, Diane Ackerman summons us to the wager of sheer possibility: life against death, delight still (if only just barely) trouncing despair."

Lawrence Weschler

"Diane Ackerman’s vivid writing, inexhaustible stock of insights, and unquenchable optimism have established her as a national treasure, and as one of our great authors. You’re now about to become addicted to Diane Ackerman."

Jared Diamond

"[A] thought-provoking analysis of our connection to the earth… A lens that magnifies and clarifies the fascinating, far-reaching effects humans have had on our planet and ourselves."

Shelf Awareness - Lee E. Cart

"A humdinger of a book… Ackerman is optimistic, even exhilarated, and frequently giddy about the future of humanity."

San Francisco Chronicle - Jon Christensen

"An ode to the planet we’ve created for ourselves… Rarely grim, and the overwhelming spirit is one of relentless optimism."

New York Times - Nathanial Rich

"Exquisite and startling."

Harper's Magazine - Tim Flannery

"Part immersion memoir and part journalism… The Human Age is also many parts poetry."

Chicago Tribune - Beth Kephart

"Diane Ackerman writes with brilliance, zest, and high style. In a difficult time, we need to hear this voice of human affirmation. It's important. It matters. I read The Human Age and thought, Yes! This is the way to look ahead."

Jonathan Weiner

04/15/2014
Distinguished naturalist/poet Ackerman argues that "our relationship with nature has changed…radically, irreversibly, but by no means all for the bad."

Library Journal

★ 2014-07-10
A shimmering narrative about how the human and natural worlds coexist, coadapt and interactively thrive.Prolific essayist and naturalist Ackerman (One Hundred Names for Love, 2011, etc.) offers absorbing commentary on both the positive and negative effects of human consumption and innovation on the Earth. We are an ever increasing population of “nomads with restless minds,” she writes, and her well-researched, substantiated observances take us from the outer reaches of space to view the world’s sprawling cities to the Toronto zoo, where the Orangutan Outreach initiative “Apps for Apes” improves the lives and expands the perceptions of primates whose population is declining. Humans have become “powerful agents of planetary change,” she writes, creating wildly fluctuating weather patterns and irreversible global warming, evidenced in our backyards and in the stratosphere and reflected in the migratory patterns of the animal world. Thankfully, Ackerman’s ecological forecast isn’t completely bleak; hope springs from fieldwork with geologists studying the fossilized record of the “Anthropocene” (the age of human-ecological impact), tech scientists creating bioengineered body organs from 3-D prints, and a French botanist whose research demonstrates the ability to “reconcile nature and man to a much greater degree” by rebalancing the delicate ecosystems damaged by invasive species. Ackerman optimistically presents innovations in “climate farming,” the exploding popularity of rooftop farming and the urban-landscaped oasis of Manhattan’s High Line. She also examines European attempts to harness everything from body heat to wind energy. Ackerman is less certain about the longevity of the animal world or the true charm of the robotic revolution, but whether debating the moral paradoxes of lab chimeras or the mating rituals of fruit flies, she’s a consummate professional with immense intelligence and infectious charm.Through compelling and meditative prose, Ackerman delivers top-notch insight on the contemporary human condition.

Kirkus Reviews

"Ackerman has established herself over the last quarter of a century as one of our most adventurous, charismatic and engrossing public science writers…[S]he has demonstrated a rare versatility, a contagious curiosity and a gift for painting quick, memorable tableaus drawn from research across a panoply of disciplines…The Human Age is a dazzling achievement: immensely readable, lively, polymathic, audacious."

Rob Nixon

"[W]ith a poet’s soul and a journalist’s precision…[Ackerman’s] examinations of overpopulation, the energy crisis, and our dependence on technology make The Human Age both foreboding and inspirational."

Entertainment Weekly - Kyle Anderson

"Splendidly prismatic…[N]early every page holds surprises."

New York Times - Andrew C. Revkin

"Amazingly illuminating…Ackerman reaches into the past to understand and explain our future…with her typically intoxicating blend of scholarship, wisdom, grace, and humor."

Siddhartha Mukherjee

"With graceful intelligence, Ackerman calls for an enlightened guardianship for the planet. I cannot imagine a richer text of image and insight."

Terry Tempest Williams

"Fascinating…Ackerman offers a cross-cultural tour of human ingenuity…Her words invite us to feel the hope she feels."

Barbara J. King

"Ferociously inspiring."

Seattle Times - Alan Moores

With an inquisitive tone, narrator Barbara Caruso dives into Diane Ackerman's exploration of the current geological age, in which “nature surrounds, permeates, effervesces in, and includes us.” This is the human age, the Anthropocene. Caruso's clear, unhurried enunciation prevents listeners from being overwhelmed by the scope of Ackerman's research, which runs the gamut from primates to weather to the blue revolution and beyond. The narrative is conversational, marked by rhetorical questions that Caruso inflects perfectly to spark the intended wonder. Despite the grim realities that led to the Anthropocene, Ackerman—and Caruso—offer a hopeful perspective that challenges listeners to reconsider the role that humans will play not only in nature but also as nature, going forward. A.S. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2014 - AudioFile