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The Invention of Nature
Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Andrea Wulf’s biography restores Alexander von Humboldt to the center of nineteenth-century science and environmental thought. Following the Prussian naturalist from his constrained youth through expeditions in the Spanish Americas and Russia, the book shows how field observation, measurement, aesthetic response, and wide reading shaped his vision of nature as an interconnected whole. Wulf also traces his encounters with figures including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aimé Bonpland, Simón Bolívar, and Thomas Jefferson. The later chapters move beyond Humboldt’s lifetime to examine his influence on Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, Ernst Haeckel, and John Muir. The result is both an adventure-filled life and a history of ideas: an account of how connections among climate, geography, plants, animals, and human activity became central to understanding the living world—and why Humboldt’s warnings about environmental destruction remain significant.
