Read an excerpt of the new book The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt. Wulf and Melcher will discuss why they think his legacy should be better known in the modern fight against a changing climate.

In the process, he also described human-induced climate change-and was perhaps the first person to do so.Īuthor Andrea Wulf and illustrator Lillian Melcher retell the voyages of Alexander von Humboldt in a new, illustrated book that draws upon Humboldt’s own journal pages. There, he would climb volcanoes, collect countless plant and animal specimens, and eventually come to the conclusion that the natural world was a unified entity-biology, geology and meteorology all conjoining to determine what life took hold where. On the Spanish ship Pizarro, he set sail for South America with 42 carefully chosen scientific instruments. In 1799, the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt embarked on the most ambitious scientific voyage of his life. With encounters with indigenous peoples, missionaries, colonists and jaguars, and incorporating Humboldt’s own sketches, drawings and manuscripts, this is a thrilling adventure story of history’s most daring scientist.A scene from Andrea Wulf’s new book “The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt,” which depicts how Alexander von Humboldt was able to obtain electric eels to study their leaping attack behavior.

to meet Thomas Jefferson and campaign for the abolition of slavery. Travel with him to Venezuela, to Lake Valencia, the Llanos and the Orinocco, and follow him during his time in Cuba, Cartagena, Bogota and his one-year trek across the Andes, as he climbs the volcano Chimborazo, explores Inca monuments, and visits Washington D.C. In The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, 88-year-old Humboldt takes us on a fantastic voyage, back through his life, tracing his footsteps around the rainforests, mountains and crocodile-infested rivers of South America when he was a young man. Meet Alexander von Humboldt: the great lost scientist, visionary, thinker and daring explorer the man who first predicted climate change, who has more things named after him than anyone else (including a sea on the moon), and who has inspired generations of writers, thinkers and revolutionaries.

The adventures of alexander von humboldt