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Comment by idolaspecus | Hacker News Reader

The article references Andrea Wulf's the Invention of Nature a number of times, which I'd like to give a hearty, emphatic +1 recommendation to. It's a beautifully written biography and the Vintage Books paperback is also a physically beautiful book.

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A short video [1] with Andrea Wulf about Humboldt and her book.

Edit: A documentary[2] based on the book.

[1]https://vimeo.com/93417125

[2]https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/details/show/humboldt-epi...

One of my favorite books of all time. I saw Wulf speak at Vanderbilt last year and the stories she shares about Humboldt are really remarkable ... One of the world's greatest scientists, adventurers and thinkers. Now his name is hardly known, overtaken by his disciple, Charles Darwin.

I found that book rather annoyingly focused on nature holism and environmentalism, it felt like it was trying way too hard to project 21st century popular sensibilities onto Humboldt. And bizarrely it almost completely ignores his explorations in South America!

"Almost ignore" is a bit strong - his South American trip is 40 of 340 pages. But yes, she doesn't give it any special prominence compared to the rest of his life (as it perhaps would have earned), and she talks a lot about his posthumous impact.

I think you've implicitly rejected the thesis of the book, which is of course your prerogative as a reader, but the way the comment is worded makes it unclear whether you realize you've rejected the thesis.

Andrea Wulf also co-authored an illustrated account of Humboldt's South American expedition [0].

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Alexander-Humboldt-Pantheo...

Agreed. Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe: Life as a Work of Art makes a good companion ;)

Purchased! Side note: new books on Amazon always seemed to be perfectly priced so that I buy new instead of used. Is this just a market at equilibrium plus my personal bias? It makes me feel like Amazon is driving used book sellers into the ground in some nefarious way, but I don't know enough about economics to come to any conclusions myself.

Absolutely! That was my favourite book of the year when I read it. And not that long for a biography, actually.

I can't recommend this book enough. I read it this year and enjoyed every second of it.

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