This book follows the life of Alexander Von Humboldt and takes us on a rapturous journey with him through South America and Siberia, with detours with Darwin, Thoreau, Emerson and strangely enough with Bolivar during his own revolution. I have criticized other books for this same reason, but Andrea Wolf was both chronological with these detours and stuck with the theme of Humboldt and naturalism. And thus we learn about this great man and our current view of nature.

Alexander Von Humboldt was the first ecologist, environmentalist, a great champion of science and nature popularization and a intellectual godfather to entire generations of scientists. So how in hell have I not heard of him until now?

To me this was incredibly weird considering that Humboldt has also in his latter life written a book titled Cosmos that has thrived to show connections of all of sciences at the time and put on display the glory and beauty of our world and universe. Sound familiar, it should because Carl Sagan did the same in the 70s. Surely he had made some acknowledgements to Humboldt, so I pulled my copy of Cosmos off the shelf and reread the introduction. Nothing. Ok, Sagan started every chapter with a few quotes by notable people, maybe there is some mention there. Still nothing. Oh well ,lets look at the index. Page 89, in a footnote acknowledgement of Humboldts views on comets with the source listed as his book Cosmos volume 5... Oh the Irony! And I know that this was definitely added by one of many editors and research librarians, still something I guess...

This book came at the right time, this mans legacy has to be resurrected and this time remembered for good.