The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World.Andrea Wulf and Alfred A. Knopf. September 15, 2015, 496 pages.
Alexander Von Humboldt is one of the most famous human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. And walk the face of the earth, he certainly did.
On September 14, 1869, on the centennial of Humboldt's birth, people living in cities in Europe, Africa, Australia, North America, and South America took to the streets to celebrate his name. Since that time, you might have noticed (or not noticed, as it were), Alexander Von Humboldt the man has receded from prominence, but the influence of his intelligence lives on.
Alexander Von Humboldt is no less than the forefather of environmentalism—the first to conceive of a natural world connected and intertwined like a web. As described by Andre Wulf, "He saw the world as one great living organism where everything is connected, conceiving a bold new vision of nature that still influences the way that we understand the natural world."
Thanks to the clear and animated prose of Wulf, the intelligence and adventurous spirit of Humboldt comes alive on the page. Wulf artfully traces the journeys and experiments of Humboldt's life, into conversations with people like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, and Simón Bolívar, and through his influence on people like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Charles Darwin.
For planners and others concerned with building a sustainable and healthy world for later generations to inherit, Humboldt's towering influence is made clear from an anecdote early in his life. Exploring the Lake Valencia area of present-day Venezuela, Humboldt concluded that deforestation had changed the climate of the area. "As Humbdolt described how humankind was changing the climate, he unwittingly became the father of the environmental movement," writes Wulf.
The reader should be warned, however, that no small amount of envy should be expected while reading this book—both for the world of Humboldt's day, with so many possibilities for exploration and discovery, and for the world of today, suffering from a lack of recognition and celebration of Humboldt's example.