The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.NATIONAL BEST SELLEROne of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the YearWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The James Wright Award for Nature Writing, the … Book Prize, The James Wright Award for Nature Writing, the Costa Biography Award, the Royal Geographic Society’s Ness Award, the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award
Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Kirkus Prize Prize for Nonfiction, the Independent Bookshop Week Book Award
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, Nature, Jezebel, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, New Scientist, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, The Spectator
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirteen towns, a river, parks, bays, lakes, and mountains. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether he was climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infected Siberia or translating his research into bestselling publications that changed science and thinking. Among Humboldt’s most revolutionary ideas was a radical vision of nature, that it is a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone.
Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.
With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.
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What?! This is not a romance!
Well, yes, but I do read nonfiction, particularly if it relates to the Georgian/Regency era. Alexander von Humboldt’s globe-tranforming peregrinations fall into that window, and provide a cultural cross-section of what was afoot in those interesting times. This is a scrumptious biography, for those who like history, culture, science, and the intersections of those fields.
Von Humboldt was among the last of the scientific generalists, and because he worked across disciplines–geography, climatology, botany, zoology, meteorology, geology, anthropology–his observations and insights were profound. He predicted global climate change more than 200 years ago. He saw the devastating cultural and ecological consequences of replacing indigenous farming methods with exploitative colonial mono-crops (and the enslavement or near-equivalent of indigenous labor necessary to sustain mono-crop farming).
Von Humboldt was THE scientific superstar of his day, and he lived to be almost 90 years old. For me, one of the book’s most fascinating aspects (among many) was the portrayal of an international celebrity in the age before Darwin’s theories had been perverted to excuse all manner of buffoonery under the heading of masculine nature or evolutionary imperative.
Von Humboldt never married, he had no progeny, but he was ferociously supportive of younger scientists. He was outspoken against enslavement and colonialism, he railed against the view of nature as a wilderness to be exploited and tamed for the benefit of man. He invented environmental awareness in northern European modern culture, and though he was German, he spent much of the period of the Napoleonic wars in Paris, the center of European science at the time. Such was Von Humboldt’s intellectual cachet, that even Napoleon didn’t dare object.
This guy was phenomenally influential in terms of strengthening the international scientific community, creating environmentalism as science, and speaking truth to political power on behalf of the planet, and yet, he spent his wealth on his expeditions, he did not involve himself in politics per se, and he was at best socially inept. He was a different kind of hero, but if we salvage this planet as an ecosystem that can support human life, we will do so in part because Von Humboldt blazed the trail 200 years ago. A GREAT read.
One of the best biographies I have ever read, on this occasion about the great German explores, Von Humboldt, with a fine mix of nature, adventure, history and politics.
Exceptional, detailed, but easy to read biography of one of the seminal figures in ecological thought. A polymath who inspired Darwin, amongst many others. Largely lost to popular consciousness now, this book may begin to bring him back to broader general awareness.
Wulf is fabulous.
Very well-written, fact-filled narrative of the life, adventures, accomplishments and times of Alexander von Humboldt. I learned that he was close to Goethe in the latter’s ;later years, that Humboldt was far more famous world-wide in his time than any other scientist-naturalist and that he invented several now standard meteorological measurements. Author Andrea Wulff, makes a strong argument that Humboldt was the world’s first global environmentalist, because he was a genius at synthesizing across disciplines the detailed knowledge he gained from experiment and explorations.. A few “stand-alone” chapters on Humboldt’s influence on Darwin, Thoreau and other intellectual leaders of their day are quite interesting as well.
A well-written history of Alexander von Homblodt and the disciplines and scientists he influenced and inspired.
Details on the life, ideas, and travels of Alexander Von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, and naturalist. His view of nature as a web of life is the one shared today by most naturalists and, in part, arose from his interactions with Goethe, the German playwright/ poet. Von Humboldt was one of the first to recognize the influence of man on the environment and his contribution to climate change and loss of habitat. The writing is clear and fluid. An excellent read!
Superb biography of one of the unsung heroes of science and the environmental movement. Humboldt helped usher in modern science.
Kindle fails at rendering graphics, but the writing is excellent.