Winner of the Costa Biography Award 2015
Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2016
"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."
—The Boston Globe
"It is impossible to read The Invention of Nature without contracting Humboldt fever. Wulf makes Humboldtians of us all." —New York Review of Books
"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." —Guardian
"A magnificent work of resurrection, beautifully researched, elegantly written, a thrilling intellectual odyssey." —The Sunday Times
"Marvellous... On one level, [The Invention of Nature] is a rollicking adventure story... Yet it is also a fascinating history of ideas." —Financial Times
"The most complete portrait of one of the world's most complete naturalists." —The Spectator (UK)
"Wulf does much to revive our appreciation of this ecological visionary through her lively, impressively researched account of his travels and exploits" —New York Times
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Ownstory: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolìvar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.
Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.
