This author has a style that, at his best, is a cross between Stephen J. Gould and Edward Abbey. The problem is, while the book started out very promising, with the most enjoyable writing I've read all year, it soon loses steam. When he writes about the quirks and oddities of the animal kingdom, he is not to be beat, but once he turns his attention to the human animal, the book drops into the ordinary. The people he writes about are interesting, and could perhaps make a good book, and in fact, did make a good book, but the stories were a total disappointment after the solid beginning of the first few chapters, a promise of something different and special that was never quite fulfilled. Perhaps if the author had excised those chapters, and focused on just the human stories, the lack would never have been noticed; or if he had ended with those wonderful notes instead of beginning, it would have seemed more like a sublime conclusion than an unfulfilled promise. Either way, the book has some real strong points, but don't expect it to be consistent. ( )

Octopus-wrestling, vampire moths, and disaffected crows - oh my! I like David Quammen. More to the point, I want to be David Quammen. Back in the early 1980's, with neither scientific nor journalistic background, he stumbled into a sweet gig writing about the natural world for Outside Magzine, and he's never looked back.

'Natural Acts' was the title of that Outside column and the title of a 1985 collection of pieces from that column. It's back, and it's bigger and better than before with the addition of longer and more recent essays in this expanded edition.

Quammen's humor, his broad liberal arts view of the world, and a pen honed over decades make him one of the most engaging science writers around.
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