The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A breathtakingly illustrated and brilliantly evocative recounting of Alexander Von Humboldt's five-year expedition in South America—from the author of Magnificent Rebels and the New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, but his most revolutionary idea was a radical vision of nature as a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone. His theories and ideas were profoundly influenced by a five-year exploration of South America. Now Andrea Wulf partners with artist Lillian Melcher to bring this daring expedition to life, complete with excerpts from Humboldt's own diaries, atlases, and publications. She gives us an intimate portrait of the man who predicted human-induced climate change, fashioned poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and influenced iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, and John Muir. This gorgeous account of the expedition not only shows how Humboldt honed his groundbreaking understanding of the natural world but also illuminates the man and his passion
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this successor to Wulf's Alexander von Humboldt biography The Invention of Nature, Wulf and illustrator Melcher gloriously depict the explorer and polymath's grueling five-year journey through the Americas, lionizing him along the way. Beginning in 1799 and ending in 1804, Humboldt's expedition with botanist Aim Bonpland led him through the jungles, volcanoes, and savannahs of South America and Mexico, eventually terminating in Washington, D.C. Humboldt's work would go on to form the basis for much of modern environmental and conservation science, as Wulf points out in frequent allusions to his impact on figures such as Charles Darwin and Sim n Bol var. Though Melcher's crowded layouts sometimes impede legibility, her use of pen, ink, and watercolors with collaged mixed media (including samples from Humboldt's journals and sketches) lends a playful quality to the narrative, recalling Lauren Redniss's Radioactive. Less successful is Wulf's tendency to highlight Humboldt's anticolonialist writing while only briefly disclaiming, for instance, his theft of sacred, buried skeletons. Wulf also makes an unfortunate choice to combine Humboldt's many servants into an amalgam named only Jose, to whom Humboldt condescendingly explains Aztec history. Wulf and Melcher create an alluring narrative in dramatizing Humboldt's adventures for a generation that has forgotten him, but they fail to unpack the baggage of his tangled legacy.
