ANDREA WULF was born in India and moved to Germany as a
child. She lives in London, where she trained as a design historian
at the Royal College of Art. She is the author of Chasing Venus,
Founding Gardeners, and The Brother Gardeners, which was
long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and awarded the American
Horticultural Society Book Award. She has written for The New York
Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los
Angeles Times. She appears regularly on radio and TV, and in 2014
copresented British Gardens in Time, a four-part series on BBC
television.
www.andreawulf.com
NATIONAL BEST SELLER
“Andrea Wulf is a writer of rare sensibilities and passionate
fascinations. I always trust her to take me on unforgettable
journeys through amazing histories of botanical exploration and
scientific unfolding. Her work is wonderful, her language sublime,
her intelligence unflagging.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author
of The Signature of All Things and Big Magic
“The Invention of Nature is a big, magnificent, adventurous
book—so vividly written and daringly researched—a geographical
pilgrimage and an intellectual epic! With brilliant,
surprising, and thought-provoking connections to Simón
Bolívar, Charles Darwin, William Herschel, Charles Lyell, Walt
Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and George Perkins
Marsh. The book is a major achievement.”
—Richard Holmes, author
of Coleridge and The Age of Wonder
“Alexander von Humboldt may have been the preeminent scientist of
his era, second in fame only to Napoleon, but outside his native
Germany his reputation has faded. Wulf does much to revive our
appreciation of this ecological visionary through her lively,
impressively researched account of his travels and exploits,
reminding us of the lasting influence of his primary insight: that
the Earth is a single, interconnected organism, one that can be
catastrophically damaged by our own destructive
actions.”
—The New York Times Book Review, Top 10
Books of the Year
“Andrea Wulf reclaims Humboldt from the obscurity that has
enveloped him. . . . [She] is as enthusiastic as her subject. . . .
Vivid and exciting. . . . Wulf’s pulsating account brings this
dazzling figure back into a dazzling, much-deserved focus.”
—Matthew Price, The Boston Globe
“[Makes an] urgent argument for Humboldt’s relevance. The Humboldt
in these pages is bracingly contemporary; he acts and speaks in the
way that a polyglot intellectual from the year 2015 might, were he
transported two centuries into the past and set out to enlighten
the world’s benighted scientists and political rulers. . . . At
times The Invention of Nature reads like pulp explorer
fiction, a genre at least partially inspired by Humboldt’s own
travelogues. . . . It is impossible to read The Invention of
Nature without contracting Humboldt fever. Wulf makes
Humboldtians of us all.”
—Nathaniel Rich, New York Review of
Books
“A magnificent work of resurrection, beautifully researched,
elegantly written, a thrilling intellectual odyssey.”
—Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times
(London)
“The most complete portrait of one of the world’s most complete
naturalists.”
—Mark Cocker, The Spectator (UK)
“From Russia to the jungles of South America to the Himalayas, an
intrepid explorer’s travels make for exhilarating reading. . . .
Wulf imbues Humboldt’s adventures . . . with something of the
spirit of Tintin, relishing the jungles, mountains and dangerous
animals at every turn. . . . A superior celebration of an adorable
figure.”
—Simon Winder, The Guardian (London), Best
Books of the Year
“A superb biography. Andrea Wulf makes an inspired case for
Alexander von Humboldt to be considered the greatest scientist of
the 19th century. . . . Wulf is especially good, [on the ways that]
his ideas enjoyed an afterlife. . . . Ecologists today, Ms.
Wulf argues, are Humboldtians at heart. With the immense challenge
of grasping the global consequences of climate change, Humboldt’s
interdisciplinary approach is more relevant than ever.”
—The Economist, Best Books of the Year
“Marvelous. . . . On one level, [The Invention of Nature] is a
rollicking adventure story. . . . Yet it is also a fascinating
history of ideas.”
—Sarah Darwin, Financial Times“This
book sets out to restore Humboldt to his rightful place in the
pantheon of natural scientists. In the process, Wulf does a great
deal more. This meticulously researched work—part biography, part
cabinet of curiosities—takes us on an exhilarating armchair voyage
through some of the world’s least hospitable regions, from the
steaming Amazon basin to the ice-fringed peaks of Kazakhstan.”
—Giles Milton, Mail on Sunday (London)
“In its mission to rescue Humboldt’s reputation from the crevasse
he and many other German writers and scientists fell into after the
Second World War, it succeeds.”
—Joy lo Dico, The Independent (London)
“Luminously written.”
—Roger Cox, The
Scotsman (Edinburgh)
“A dazzling account of Humboldt’s restless search for scientific,
emotional and aesthetic satisfaction. Unapologetically in awe of
her subject and intent on restoring Humboldt’s reputation, [Wulf]
brings his ideas to the foreground—their emergence, spread and
evolution after his death. . . . Wulf goes as far as to say that
modern environmentalists, ecologists and nature writers are still
drawing from his oeuvre, even if they have never heard of him. . .
. With the environmental movement, ecology and climate science,
Wulf argues, we may have entered another period in which
connections predominate over isolated proofs, bringing renewed
relevance to Humboldt’s grand visions of nature, the world and the
universe.”
—Patrick Wilcken, Literary
Review (UK)
“Wulf, a historian with an invaluable environmental perspective,
presents with zest and eloquence the full story of Humboldt’s
adventurous life and extraordinary achievements. . . .
Humboldt, Wulf convincingly argues in this enthralling, elucidating
biography, was a genuine visionary, whose insights we need now more
than ever.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred
review)
“Arresting. . . . readable, thoughtful, and widely researched, and
informed by German sources richer than the English canon.”
—Colin Thubron, The New York Times Book Review,
“Editor’s Choice”
“I lavish praise on Andrea Wulf’s new book, The Invention of
Nature. . . . The gist of my praise is simple. Wulf recognized not
only a good story but also an important one. She has written a
fascinating book about a fascinating man whose work influences our
thinking even though his name is no longer widely remembered. . . .
Wulf’s book is about a long-dead great man but also about
ourselves.”
—Bill Streever, The Dallas Morning News
“Humboldt . . . electrified fellow polymaths such as Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, discovered climate zones, and grasped the
impact of industrialization on nature. In her coruscating account,
historian Andrea Wulf reveals an indefatigable adept of close
observation with a gift for the long view, as happy running a
series of 4,000 experiments on the galvanic response as he was
exploring brutal terrain in Latin America.”
—Barbara Kiser, Nature
“Why is the man who predicted climate change forgotten? . . .
German-born Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature:
Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, has made it her mission to put
a new shine on his reputation—and show why he still has much to
teach us.”
—Simon Worrall, National Geographic
“Engrossing. . . . Wulf magnificently recreates Humboldt’s
dazzling, complex personality and the scope of his writing. . . .
Her book fulfills her aim to restore Humboldt to his place ‘in the
pantheon of nature and science,’ revealing his approach as a key
source for our modern understanding of the natural world.”
—Jenny Uglow, The Wall Street Journal
“Gripping. . . . Wulf has delved deep into her hero’s life and
travelled widely to feel nature as he felt it. . . . No one who
reads this brilliant book is likely to forget Humboldt.”
—Stephanie Pain, New Scientist
“Exuberant, delightful. . . . Wulf is unquestionably right that von
Humboldt—a happy, sarcastic, preternaturally talented polymath—is
far less well-known outside of Germany than he should be. If The
Invention of Nature reaches the wide readership it deserves, we can
hope that situation will change.”
—Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly
“Wulf (Chasing Venus) makes an impassioned case for the
reinstatement of the boundlessly energetic, perpetually curious,
prolific polymath von Humboldt (1769–1859) as a key figure in the
history of science. . . . Wulf’s stories of wilderness adventure
and academic exchange flow easily, and her affection for von
Humboldt is contagious.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review), Best Books
of the Year
“Engrossing. . . . Humboldt was the Einstein of the 19th century
but far more widely read, and Wulf successfully combines a
biography with an intoxicating history of his times.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review), Best Books of
the Year
“This is a truly wonderful book. The German-speaking world does not
need to be reminded of Alexander Humboldt, the last universal
genius of European history. The English-speaking world does,
astonishingly, need such a reminder, and Andrea Wulf has told the
tale with such brio, such understanding, such depth. The physical
journeyings, all around South America when it was virtually terra
incognita, are as exciting as the journeys of Humboldt’s mind into
astronomy, literature, philosophy and every known branch of
science. This is one of the most exciting intellectual biographies
I have ever read, up there with Lewes’s Goethe and Ray Monk’s
Wittgenstein. And all around the subject is the world, gradually
learning to be modern—sometimes it knew it was being taught by
Humboldt, sometimes not, but there is hardly a branch of knowledge
which he did not touch and influence. Hoorah, hoorah!!”
—A. N. Wilson, author of The Victorians and
Victoria: A Life
“Andrea Wulf’s marvelous book should go a long way towards putting
this captivating eighteenth century German scientist, traveler and
opinion-shaper back at the heart of the way we look at the world
which Humboldt helped to interpret, and whose environmental
problems he predicted. She has captured the excitement and intimacy
of his experiences within the pages of this irresistible and
consistently absorbing life of a man whose discoveries have shaped
the way we see.”
—Miranda Seymour, author of Noble Endeavors: A
History of England and Germany
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