I have a theory that each writer has a place somewhere in the world that will make him bloom artistically if he can find that place. Just as 1930s Paris ignited Henry Miller, the Amazon fired up the imagination of Diane Ackerman (not that she wasn't an accomplished writer before traveling there). In "In the Amazon, Where the Sun Dines," one of the reportage pieces here, Ackerman's rich prose is well-matched by the fecundity she sees around her. She wrote, "There was so much life at every level that my senses felt almost bruised from the overload."