Rare presents an exquisite collection of stark and haunting studio images of the most endangered or imperiled plants and animals of North America. Renowned National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore has devoted years to making these photographs and documenting more than 1,200 imperiled species. Here are his favorites, highlighted with his stories about taking photographs of wild animals in controlled settings. A selection of these images was published in National Geographic Magazine in January 2009, to great acclaim. The book gives an opportunity to present those pictures bigger, in greater detail, and to add in others -- both from Sartore's archive and from those he has taken in the year since. Every one is an exquisite work of art, and together they form a repository of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and flowers that few of us will see -- and even fewer of our children will see. There is bad and good news in this book. The bad news is that the last individuals representing some of these species, like the pygmy rabbit, have died since Sartore took their photographs.

The good news is that some species, like the American bald eagle, are in fact increasing now in the wild, thanks to the effects of Congress's Endangered Species Act and the work of bird and animal lovers and environmentalists. All such stories are told, in brilliant pictures and a few well-chosen words, in Joel Sartore's work of a lifetime, Rare.