The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us - Hardcover

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.

“An ode to the planet we’ve created for ourselves... Rarely grim, and the overwhelming spirit is one of relentless optimism.”
- Nathanial Rich, New York Times

“[Ackerman] raises the bar for her peers...her penetrating insight is a joy to behold.”
- Publishers Weekly, Starred review

“Ackerman has established herself over the last quarter of a century as one of our most adventurous, charismatic, and engrossing public science writers...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 of these alluring qualities...The Human Age is a dazzling achievement: immensely readable, lively, polymathic, audacious.”
- Rob Nixon, New York Times Book Review

“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, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and The World Until Yesterday

“In this amazingly illuminating book, Diane Ackerman explains our future with her typically intoxicating blend of scholarship, wisdom, grace and humor.”
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies

“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, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the Finch and Long for this World

“The Human Age allows us to consider whether or not we will accept destruction or restoration as our legacy. I cannot imagine a richer text of image and insight, rendered with grace, intelligence and stamina.”
- Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds

“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, author of Everything that Rises, Pulitzer Prize finalist

“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.”
- Ben Dickinson, Elle

“A hard look at the impact that humans have had on Earth... thought provoking.”
- Kyle Anderson, Entertainment Weekly