by Andrea Wulf
Wulf resurrects Alexander von Humboldt, the nineteenth-century Prussian polymath whose Andean expeditions and Cosmos redefined nature as a single interconnected web of life. The book follows Humboldt's influence through Darwin, Thoreau, Muir, Marsh, and Haeckel to show how his 'invention of nature' seeded modern ecology and environmentalism.
In this collection, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World references 4 other books.
It draws on The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man and Cosmos.
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Wulf devotes a chapter to Darwin, showing how Humboldt's Personal Narrative inspired the Beagle voyage that produced On the Origin of Species.
Darwin's later works including The Descent of Man are drawn on to trace Humboldt's enduring influence on Darwinian biology.
Wulf explicitly connects Humboldt's Cosmos, his own multi-volume attempt to describe the universe as a unity, to the Sagan tradition continued in the twentieth-century book Cosmos.
The book closes by following Humboldt's influence forward into modern environmental writing, citing Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as the continuation of the ecological worldview he invented.
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How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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2 shared citations
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate
Peter Wohlleben
2 shared citations
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer
2 shared citations
Lab Girl
Hope Jahren
2 shared citations
The Descent of Man
Charles Darwin
1 shared citation
The Moral Animal
Robert Wright
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