Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature

by David Quammen

"David Quammen is simply the best natural essayist working today."--Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard "Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions," said David Quammen in the original introduction to Natural Acts . For more than two decades, he has stuck to that credo. In this updated version of curiosity leads him from New Mexico to Romania, from the Congo to the Amazon, asking questions about mosquitoes (what are their redeeming merits?), dinosaurs (how did they change the life of a dyslexic Vietnam vet?), and cloning (can it save endangered species?). This revised and expanded edition best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s, and includes recent pieces such as "Planet of Weeds," an influential new Natural Acts is an eye-opening journey that will please both Quammen fans and newcomers to his work.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Nature, Essays, Natural History, Biology, Animals

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

David Quammen (born February 1948) is an award-winning science, nature and travel writer whose work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic, Outside, Harper's, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Book Review; he has also written fiction. He wrote a column called "Natural Acts" for Outside magazine for fifteen years. Quammen lives in Bozeman, Montana.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I promised a second review / rant about people I hate. This is it. This time it's Smug Environmentalists. The hate will manifest as the review goes on.

Natural Acts is a collection of essays, which mostly appeared originally in the authors column in "Outside" magazine. The essays mostly look at a particular question that the author thought of and presents a possible answer to the question. Such as, what is the benefit of mosquitos? Or why do bats have such a bad reputation / people are so fearful of them / cause for such sensationalist fear throughout history? The first question is answered by saying that mosquitos are good because they have kept humans from developing certain portions of the world as thoroughly as they might if swarms of the critters and the malaria they carry weren't present. The second, is that there is just an irrational fear towards them and in reality bats are pretty low on the list of critters that ever harm people.

The essay about bats starts off with an interesting historical anecdote. Apparently some dude in the early stages of World War 2 had the insane idea that bats could be forced into hibernation by freezing them, and then attaching little napalm bombs to them, then they would be thawed and dropped from planes over Japan and strategic firestorms would ensue. He pushed this idea to some influential people and a couple of million dollars went to the development of his idea. Using bats that live in the millions in caves in the South West, a test was made. Some of the bats died from the freezing. More of the bats could not fly with the little packets of napalm attached to them and just fell to the ground and a few were able to do what was hoped. In a short sighted (if you don't call the whole idea short sighted) blunder the bats that did survive and fly to carry out the test ended up setting fire to army buildings and a general's car. The general whose car was firebombed pulled the plug on operation bat napalm.

The book is filled with little anecdotes like this, strange little facts from the history of the natural world,and when the author stays to writing puzzling little why questions or oddities from history he is quite enjoyable. Unfortunately his own voice comes through too often, more and more actually as the essays go on. Sort of like certain goodreads reviewers who started off just writing maybe interesting reviews and over time started thinking that people really want to read about their personal lives, their grievances, rants and why they don't like certain types of environmentalists.

As the book went on I kept getting the feeling that David Quammen probably believes that his own shit doesn't stink. Maybe I should have known that eventually me and him weren't going to get along when he started a very interesting early essay on the eyes of the Octopus with this line, "In Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon's great steaming slag heap of a novel...." and in the rest of the first paragraph gets in a few more jabs on Pynchon. One doesn't need to love Pynchon, but this was my first bristling feeling from the author.

I don't really know anything about Quammen except what he chooses to tell about himself. Some of what follows is pure conjecture on my part and if it's unfair to the author than I'm sorry, I'm probably just projecting how people who I'm reminded of have annoyed me in the past.

He's an outdoorsy type, he does outdoors things and he made a living off of traveling and writing about outdoors things. For example one of the things he mentions in a couple of essays is how much he enjoys skiing. That's fine, I enjoyed skiing when I did it years and years ago and I can see how someone would want to pursue this activity. I don't know where he skies in Montana, but I'm guessing at ski slopes where people generally do that sort of thing. That's fine and good, right? Yeah, except that he attacks the destructiveness of ski slopes in Vermont and ridicules their impact on the environment. It's just a small example he gives in his book of a pretty common theme about how awful it is that people are destroying the environment and constantly decreasing the amount of natural habitat for animals. And it's also part of the unsaid theme that I took, that I'm allowed to do these things but if too many other people do them it is bad but I'm allowed to do it.

As I said I could be just projecting but I was reminded too much of fucking granola types in college who were self-righteous assholes because they did things like rock-climbing and skiing as if their own brand of amusement was really a hundred percent 'good for the environment' with all the consumer products needed to take part in these activities and the amount of gas needed to drive a hundred miles out into nature to partake in them. Our first world privileged lifestyle is put under increasing attack in these pages (as it should be, and he does admit to being a part of it) but he also appears to place himself as being outside of being part of the problem. He's a privileged one who can fly to exotic locales, who can live in the relative wilderness of Montana and involve himself in play activities like kayaking, fishing and skiing, and make a living off of having his words printed on to dead trees. He's lucky and from his position he likes to point out how others are fucking things up.

I don't blame him for being able to do these things or getting to live where he does, but as I kept reading this book I kept feeling like I was spending time with some 'friends' from my past who always had awful things to say about me having a job and not being 'free' like they were but who never seemed to have a problem with me driving them around or getting them coffee or giving them money for smokes that came from the menial and awful jobs I had at the time.

I started to wonder what essays would read like if instead of asking questions about the good of mosquitos or about the peculiar qualities of intelligent play in crows one asked about the environmental impact of manufacturing fiberglass skis and fishing poles, or the how much harm to the natural habitat of an area that has a factory that produces pink plastic flamingos, even if they are only purchased by a consumer for ironical purposes.

I'm harking on the negative, which is unfair. I really enjoyed the first two thirds of this book. And if I had an original copy of the book, and not the revised 2008 edition with an additional 70 pages or so of essays I'd have liked it even more than I did. The preaching really takes off in those last pages, and there is plenty to be angry about in the world but I think criticism needs to be levied by realizing that you yourself might be part of the problem too. Quammen I'm sure realizes this, and is aware of his privileged position, and that he lives a life that if everyone lived the same life would seriously fuck up nature, but its in the tone he takes that makes me want to see him stop pointing the finger at everyone else and take on some of the blame himself.

[Tony]

Let me see here. What did I learn?

--- I learned that of all the known species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and crustaceans, plasmic tentacle-waving sea creatures, every brand of zooplankton, every . . . hell, every one of the 1.25 million known species of animal, one in four of them is a beetle.

--- I learned that mosquitoes are good for nothing, except maybe slowing the destruction of tropical rain forests.

--- I learned about parthenogenesis. Sure the wingless aphid sucks a lot of poplar sap, but that's not sex; not really.

---I learned about semelparity. Species as diverse as bamboos, agaves and salmon have sex, then die.

--- And I learned about hypothermia. Did you know there were more than enough lifejackets on the Titantic for the 1,489 people who didn't make it onto lifeboats? In just an hour and 50 minutes most of them were found dead and bobbing. You can die in about six hours treading water at 59 degrees F, which is warmer than practically all of the coastal and inland waters of North America.

--- I learned that Carl Linnaeus' mum and dad would put a flower in his hand when, as a toddler, he got cranky. It calmed him.

--- I learned that dinosaurs are "a Horatio Alger story, not a murder mystery."

--- I re-learned the story of Michael J. Fay and his Megatransect across Africa. Love that story.

--- I learned that a kitten cloned from a calico cat can nevertheless be a tiger-tabby shorthair. Cloning isn't resurrection. . . It isn't even, quite, duplication.

--- I learned that "Chances are good that wherever you live, during the last year sometime you have sat down within ten feet of a black widow" spider.

--- I learned, mainly, that there's lots of stuff to be learned, as I sit here waiting for the next mass extinction.

[J.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays that were originally written for Outside magazine by the author - kind of the non-fiction equivalent of short stories. Although I'm not a fan of short stories, I mostly enjoyed this collection. However, the essays added for the updated edition are much lengthier and honestly less interesting. I wanted to read this because I loved David Quammen's Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, but would only rate this 3.5 stars (rounded down).

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

About 75 percent of the essays are eye-opening wonders that raise nature and science writing to an art form and make me want to ditch New York for a cottage near a lake. The weaker 25 percent, typically profiles of a scientific figure or various obscure species, are pushy and breathless efforts at mythologizing. Quammen wrote the lesser pieces in his youth, however, so all is forgiven (plus even his lesser articles are better than the average writer's best). The essay "The Post Communist Wolf" could be the first piece of writing that made me weep. I'm not kidding. It floored me, I never saw it coming, and there was nothing manipulative or cliched about it. David Quammen is that good. He can move a jaded urban brat with an essay on wolves in Romania.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is almost certainly the source for my fondness (and concern) for crows, my intermittent fascination with Tycho Brahe, and my incomplete knowledge of sea cucumbers. They can turn themselves inside out, you know. The sea cucumbers, I mean.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of essays on nature topics (why salmon die after spawning, for example) that were originally published as newspaper columns or magazine articles, all with just a dash of humor added. It's a fun read.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

for the essay on crows, as rec'd by Pamela Turner in Crow Smarts
...........
I should have stopped there. The essays that were interesting had too much authorial intrusion such as forced humor, references to the poetry or Auden and Donne, and a pretentious vocabulary, imo. And the newer essays, added in this greatly revised & expanded edition, did not intrigue me. I kept trying to read each essay, then finding myself skimming up to the next and trying again.

Otoh, if you're a fan of Quammen, and have read the original, you'll want to seek this out.
And the crow essay is short and cute, so you'll probably want to read it. Here's my suggestion: find this book in your library (any edition). Read Has Success Spoiled the Crow?. *Iff* you really really enjoy it, check the book out.

Quammen did effectively use the Scrabble word "qua" in a sentence: "Now no sensible reader,... can be expected to care much,... I realize, about aphid biology qua aphid biology." So, basically it gets across the idea of 'for it's own sake.' That's cool.
And I did get one new book recommendation, or at least one more idea to ponder:

Over a hundred years ago, Quammen explains, Eugène N. Marais, The Soul Of The Ape, argued that "the human unconscious... is nothing other than the older and more basic conscious mentality of prehuman primates, which has been pushed into the psychological background, but not eliminated, by the newly evolved human consciousness." Obviously that's not exactly accurate, according to recent learnings by neuropsychiatry, but there's a perspective there that makes a lot of sense. The lens of that perspective could certainly be an effective tool as we ponder such current interests as the power of habit over willpower.

But, yeah, I just shared what *I* think are the best bits of the book. In my opinion, you can skip it.

[Max Potthoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I walked past a small bookstore in Lincoln, Nebraska, I noticed David Quammen's "Natural Acts" displayed prominently in the window. Honestly, I was drawn to it because the cover was beautifully designed(while it's improper to judge a book based on it's cover, I've never seen anything wrong picking one up because of it).

Quammen has had the kind of career that would make anyone with a remote interest in the outdoors jealous. He has written many years for Outside magazine, embarking on wild adventures and writing on a wide variety of subjects. If nothing else, this is collection of essays is valuable for the "holy shit, that's some dude's job?!" factor. The book is organized with his older works at the beginning, and more recent, more substantial works at the end. It's fun to watch Quammen mature as a writer, becoming more thoughtful and more nuanced in his later essays.

My personal favorite was "Planet of Weeds," a work that synthesizes the post-apocalyptic potential of invasive species. He brings many different expert's opinions to the piece, but Quammen's own voice is very much present and convincing. When he hits his stride like he does in Weeds, it's a wildly enjoyable book. To get to those gems however, you must be willing to slog endure some well-written fluff pieces.

I'd say it's worth it, though, and a terrific opportunity to see one of the more successful nature writers of our time find his voice.

[Adam Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Quammen is a self-effacing naturalist and travel author which I can't help but compare to Bill Bryson. He has a sharp wit and is good at bringing lofty and complex concepts from the natural sciences to a general audience. His writing is, from a technical standpoint, some of the best I've ever encountered.

This book is a collection of columns from a magazine he wrote for over the course of many years. They are roughly grouped together, with the first section zooming in on particular animals (mosquito, bat, and octopus, to name a few), the middle section profiling science and conservationist figures, the fourth section on animal reproduction, and the final section on big-picture topics.

The length of the essays are perfect for casual reading: long enough to go relatively deep on a topic, short enough that they don't take long to get through. The result was that it was easy to keep momentum on reading this, even though the stories didn't connect into each other in any particular way.

[Jason Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first collection of Quammen's natural history essays for Outsider magazine. This selection features a run of articles on 'verminous' creatures, a section on oddball characters in science, some contemporary issues like animal rights (kinda copped out at the end of that one, dincha Dave? :) ), and finally a few curious corners of natural history for their own sake.

I'll read anything by Quammen. His mix of humour, up-to-the-minute science, travelogue and thoughtful angles is endlessly engaging. Whilst he insists he's 'only' a journalist, few scientists can communicate science this well. I didn't find his essayist's muscles quite so well developed in this collection as in later ones: his angles were sometimes a tad contrived and less punchy. Nonetheless, there's not a sentence in here that isn't enjoyable reading. How can you not want to read essays with titles like The Miracle Of Blubber, A Republic Of Cockroaches and The Troubled Gaze Of The Octopus?

[Todd Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Natural Acts consists of a series of light and lively natural history essays culled from articles that Quammen wrote for Outside Magazine over the years. The first part of the book consists of short articles about animal species (mosquitos, beetles, black widow spiders, anacondas, and bats, to name but a few) in which a few fun facts are provided before moving on to the next. The later articles are longer and more serious in tone and include a mix of adventure travel with nature writing and a discussion of environmental issues. I particularly appreciated the fact that Quammen was willing to identify and provide evidence for human population growth as a significant contributor to environmental degradation, habitat destruction and species extinction given the timidity with which so many of the so-called ‘stewards’ of the environment approach the issue.

Though it never rises to the level of greatness, the book is decent, and worth the read.

[David Mccormick · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could give this book 3.5 stars, I would. It's a great collection of Mr. Quammen's work and you can definitely see his evolution as a science writer, moving from cocky self-assurance in the early part of the book towards more introspective and thoughtful extended thoughts in the later work. The major flaw of the collection is the tendency to lose track of where he is going with some of the essays. Mr. Quammen has a unfortunate tendency to keep hinting at some big reveal during the first half of the essay, lose interest in it, and never mention the topic again. He is also slightly dismissive and smug towards those he disagrees with (a dangerous prospect when writing about some partisan and highly contested fields of study), but his passion for ecology and preservation shines through and serves as the dominant theme of the collection. The writing is very good, but it never reached the level of "Monster of God."

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like David Quammen a lot, ever since I read The Flight of the Iguana A Sidelong View of Science and Nature a good long time ago. He manages to write about the environment without being shrill, repetitive, or completely depressing. Ok his later articles can be pretty depressing but have you looked at environment lately? He's got a clear concise way of writing that really conveys the gravity of say, African rain forest while still leavening it with humor and adventure. His longer pieces are somewhat weaker, especially the book length ones. Maybe I just get tired of the tone he takes after long exposure.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating, wonderful, absorbing, funny read. I can see (from reading my own review, not because I remember) that I had some trouble with a few of the essays in Flight of the Iguana because some of the data in them has since been discounted and the theories have been updated. However, I didn't find that with this book. Some of the stories are a bit dated, but it didn't throw me as much. And there were some particularly evocative passages, particularly about the importance of water.

I highly recommend this book for nature enthusiasts, science geeks, and anyone aspiring to be a science writer.

[David Feela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quammen is a clever writer. He brings both humor and insight to his discussions of the natural world, in biology and supports them thoroughly with those Homo sapiens known to be authorities in their particular fields. I don't think he goes overboard, as some reviewers claim, with an "environmentalist" agenda -- whatever that is. Yes, his writing Is deeply concerned with the environment, a passion I can respect because of the way he writes about it, so it follows that he would discuss the difficulties inherent in our living here too. I did find the first section most appealing, his pieces done for Outside magazine, because they offered such clever perspectives on creatures I have known so little about. They were, essentially, intimate portraits of an unseen world.

[Mark McTague · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given that this is a compendium of the author's magazine articles over the past quarter century, some are stronger than others or more timely, but all of them offer some thoughtful observations and questions that provoke more than passing reflection. The author is not a scientist but a journalist with a keen interest in and affection for the natural world, and is also someone willing to put himself into direct encounters with that world, so what you get are intelligent musings of an informed layman, which is what 99.9% of us are. If the natural world is important to you, this book can give you food for thought, as they say.

[Laura Steinert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't often buy books of essays--I find them pretentious and I resent being forced to read them while in college. I expected this to be a bunch of macho bologna, but was captured immediately by both the "voice" and the "world view" of Quammen. When I met him at a reading, way back in the 1990s, he was a serious, personable guy and far from the pompous jerks who usually publish essays.

This is not too science-y for the average reader, and is certainly something a nature lover will enjoy.

[James Roberts moved to StoryGraph. · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some fantastic essays here and some not so fantastic; enlightening and boring. Quammen’s shorter works pack a heavier punch while he longer works tend to drone on and on. A solid enough read with accessible information to the layman.

[C.K. Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Quammen's Monster of God, a fantastic book on the man-eaters and their relationship to society, I immediately found another one of his books to cover. I was looking for something in the same vein, and although the series of essays format of Natural Acts was different, I was hoping for the same thing: musings on ecology and science, and stories from the bush. Natural Acts was 4/5 that.

Compiled of years of his writings from his naturalist column, Natural Acts considers a wide-array of topics including the place of mosquitos, testing at the Tularosa basin, whether or not the desert is rightly to be considered clean, and the work of Jack Horner. These were all intriguing topics on their own, and certainly worth the short time investment on an individual scale, but it does mean that the entire work is lacking a larger point or idea. What is to be learned needs to be learned at a microscopic level. I cannot quickly explain its point or what I learned because mosquitos have little if nothing to do with the paleontology of Jack Horner. Upon reading essays like this, you'll feel full of interesting tidbits of information, but will lack a broader perspective on an important issue. It feels like a Youtube or social media education where you will be equipped to add this: "Did you know that if you were to compile all the different species in the world, one-fourth of them would be beetles?" Interesting, perhaps even useful in certain scenarios, but that particularly piece of information isn't rocking anyone's world.

But I digress. Much of the book contains more useful pieces of information, such as the excavations of egg mountain and the discussion surrounding dinosaurs. I merely expand upon this because the weakness of Natural Acts isn't in the writing which is every bit as engaging as Quammen's other work, but in the format which is too scattered to truly be great.

Quammen is best when he is writing about his experiences with experts in the field. He is at his best when he is covering science through biography, telling the works and memoirs of another or his own story through the wilderness with a bushwhacker. The final portion of Natural Acts does this. He covers discussions on extinction and the national park system through discussions with a man named Jablonski. He talks about his own journey down the Grand Canyon, musing on the peacefulness of nature and its removal from the cares of civilization. He talks about searching for a wolf after discussions on communism in Romania. He spends a great deal of time writing about the megatransect of J. Michael Fay, highlighting his work in protecting the rainforests of Congo (this is the book at its best).

Natural Acts, then, when it is at its best, is excellent, teaching its reader in a hands-on and philosophic and historical manner the content of science. When it is at its worst, its like a series of well-written articles. At all times worthwhile, but not always perfect. Even so, it is still a recommended read if any of these topics sounds interesting.

[Stefani · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that David Quammen is an advocate for the most underreported, unloved, and reviled members of the animal kingdom is a gross understatement. He is, perhaps, their messiah, the one person who can write about mosquitos, bats, and black widow spiders with both breezy irreverence and serious fascination with creatures that most people would do best to stay far away from. Here's a sample:

the mosquito is taking a bad rap. It has been victimized, I submit to you, by a strong case of anthropomorphic bias. In fact, the little sucker can be viewed, with only a small bit of squinting, as one of the great ecological heroes of planet Earth.

The female [black widow] has an amazing capacity to endure long stretches without food—three or four months, at least—which makes it unlikely the species could ever die out entirely from starvation.

Admittedly, I find this lighthearted approach to discussing science utterly fascinating. I'm convinced that David Quammen could write entertainingly about the process of paint drying (and, after reading "The River Jumps Over Montana," I am now more confident of that statement).

Most (if not all) of the essays are adapted from Quammen's regular column in Outside Magazine and are fairly short and pithy in keeping with a magazine's word count limitations. Probably my favorite chapter was "Clone Your Troubles Away," which discussed the myriad of ethical and logistical issues involved with cloning animals or people and why we should fear the future of designer babies.

[Jonathan Jasinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, -1 Star just because I don’t absolutely love the writing. Which is horrendously subjective and unfair, but I just can’t give a full 5 to a book I had to put down at points. It’s engaging at times, but it feels like it’s engaging enough when introducing/joking/laying a frame, switches into watered down science speak that you can still understand, then ends back in an enjoyable tone. Idk, just got through Edward Abbey and found the transitions, the presentation of the science stuff, a bit smoother. Maybe a weaker essay or two in this as well, and so ya, 4 stars. BUT- what an overview of so many interesting nature related things. The blood drinking moth is amazing, and the essay on extinction should be required reading for, just, humans, at this point. Bought this in Yosemite as a kid 15+ years ago and got through half of it, finished it up this time. lil me made a smart choice.

[Chuck McGrady · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book [I read the original version, not the new one with more essays.]. The book is a series of essays that the author wrote for a magazine, and they cover a myriad of subjects, from condors to bison, to graylings (fish) to cockroaches. Aside from different species of animals, the author talks to animal rights, extinction, hypothermia, and deserts among other things I took the book along on a vacation trip to Arches and Canyonlands, and it was a perfect companion to hikes and quiet moments spent contemplating that natural world.

The author has a sense of humor and mixes his discussion of each subject with a mix of literary figures.

[Cat_on_skates]

The only person more arrogant than a politician is a popular science or history author who is neither a scientist nor a historian.

Often, bragging about their own life experiences, travels, and resulting philosophies is a more central narrative than the subject itself.

But, after reading Walden, this seems to be nothing new and may be something of an expected characteristic of the writers of this genre.

This book, if it can really be called a book as it’s mostly just a republication of previously written articles and essays, is not an exception.

[James Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the stories in this book are rather short and engaging. Others are quite protracted. Sure, Quammen did a very thorough study of the subject at hand, but I thought his long-winded descriptions of what he found got quite tedious in the longer pieces. I found his use of ostentatious vocabulary only a little annoying. I usually love popular science books, but this one... not so much.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice collection of essays / magazine articles. I have liked everything I've read by this author. I listened to the book and wish there had been a publication date for the announced for each piece.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haldane wurde von einem Theologen befragt, ob er etwas über die Natur Gottes sagen könne. Der habe, “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of nature essays - a time capsule from 1985.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an awesome biology lesson. I would love to use these stories in my biology classes.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Quammen is a delight to read. That is all.

[gadabout · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun collection of essays by an entertaining author. Not much else worth saying about it.