Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | On Extended Wings | 1985 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 2 | A Natural History of the Senses | 1990 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 3 | The Moon by Whale Light and Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians and Whales | 1991 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 4 | A Natural History of Love | 1994 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 5 | The Curious Naturalist | 1994 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 6 | The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds | 1995 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 7 | Monk Seal Hideaway | 1995 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 8 | A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis | 1997 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 9 | Bats: Shadows in the Night | 1997 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 10 | The Book of Love | 1998 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 11 | Deep Play | 1999 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 12 | Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden | 2001 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 13 | Twilight of the Tenderfoot: A Western Memoir | 2002 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 14 | An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain | 2004 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 15 | The Zookeeper’s Wife | 2007 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 16 | Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day | 2009 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 17 | One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir | 2011 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
| 18 | The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us | 2014 | Diane Ackerman | Buy |
Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction work covers nature, the senses, the brain, love, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. Her breakthrough book, A Natural History of the Senses (1990), explored how we smell, taste, hear, touch, and see, and was adapted into a PBS Nova miniseries called Mystery of the Senses. She followed it with A Natural History of Love (1994) and continued writing about science for general readers throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007) is her best-known work outside the nature genre. It tells the true story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who used the Warsaw Zoo to hide Jewish refugees during World War II. The book was adapted into a 2017 film. Her later nonfiction includes One Hundred Names for Love (2011), a memoir about her husband’s stroke and recovery through language, and The Human Age (2014), about how humans are reshaping the planet.