Humboldt's Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey that Changed the Way We See the World - Hardcover

Helferich, Gerard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592400523 ISBN 13: 9781592400522

Publisher: Gotham, 2004

Synopsis

A detailed portrait of German naturalist and adventurer Alexander Humboldt describes his seminal five-year and six-thousand-mile scientific exploration of South America, chronicling his expedition through the Amazon and over the Andes, his extraordinary catalog of sixty thousand plants, his study of the ancient cultures of the region, and his influence on science. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Gerard Helferich worked in book publishing for twenty-five years as an editor and publisher.

From Publishers Weekly:

His name may be vaguely familiar, although you may not know why. But in his time, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an explorer and scientist of unparalleled fame, whose work largely inspired Charles Darwin and influenced the course of a number of scientific disciplines ranging from geology to meteorology. Helferich's lush and engaging biographical adventure tale, which covers mainly the years Humboldt spent exploring Latin America (1799–1804), successfully recreates the New World when it was still very novel to European eyes. A Prussian sailing under a Spanish flag, Humboldt and his trusty (but poorly fleshed out) sidekick, Aimé Bonpland, carve a path from the Old World through the Canary Islands, to the parts of South America now known as Venezuela, Colombia and Peru; later, he travels to Cuba and Mexico. Through the Amazon and the Andes, the flies and mosquitoes, the crocodiles, piranha and jaguars, Humboldt and a small but changing group of assistants lug all manner of scientific instrumentation, boxes of botanical samples and provisions over thousands of miles, through uncharted territories and back again, discovering in the process the faded glory of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, the unsustainable nature of the slave trade and innumerable new species of plants. Helferich's eye for telling detail does justice to Humboldt's own obsessive culling of observed particulars about the world around him, laying bare in the process many of the foundations of modern scientific method.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gotham
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1592400523
• ISBN 13: 9781592400522
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 358