How the Dead Dream

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Kieran Suckling for his talent as a critic and his knowledge of endangered plants and animals. I'm very grateful to Richard Nash for his unflagging enterprise, Maria Massie for her excellent instincts, Kate Bernheimer for her generous editorial help, Julie Miller for her time and talent with photographs, Chris Dietz for his reading, and my brother Joshua for his intimate understanding of the capitalist spirit.

For their own writing, particular thanks to David Hancocks, author of the lovely and necessary A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future; Joy Williams, author of the groundbreaking essay "The Animal People," among other works, for her inspiration; and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, authors of When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals.

For their kindness in allowing me close to zoo creatures, many thanks to Jeff Williamson and Steve Koyle of the Phoenix Zoo, as well as Nancy Biggins-Adams, keeper of mammals at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

To the memory of the West African black rhinoceros, which disappeared from the world in the time it took to write this book. And in honor of the rarest species in the United States, any of which may vanish in the blink of an eye: the Alabama beach mouse, Alabama lampmussel, Alabama sturgeon, Attwater's greater prairie chicken, Berkeley kangaroo rat, Buena Vista Lake ornate shrew, Cahaba pebblesnail, Carolina elktoe, Catspaw, Devil's Hole pupfish, Florida panther, Florida salt marsh vole, Fosberg's love grass, Franciscan manzanita, giant Palouse earthworm, Guam Micronesian kingfisher, Hawaiian crow, Hawaiian monk seal, interrupted rocksnail, Key Largo woodrat, Lange's metalmark butterfly, and Miami blue butterfly.

Lydia Millet is the author of five novels, most recently Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which was shortlisted for Britain's Arthur C. Clarke Prize and named one of the best books of 2005 by publications such as the Christian Science Monitor, Time Out Chicago, Booklist, and Canada's Globe and Mail. Her 2002 novel My Happy Life won the PEN-USA Award for Fiction. She lives in Arizona with her husband and daughter.