This could have been a straightforward biography. It could have followed Humbolt as the traveled to South America and meticulously recorded and collects plants, animals, rocks and even measured the blueness of the sky. It could have recounted the people he knew and the books that he wrote.

The Invention of Nature does all of that, but it is so much more. This is the history of an idea. It is an idea that we've grown so used to that we don't think about it any more than a fish thinks about water.

Wulf takes us on Humbolt's journey to South America to the top of Chimborazo where he looks down realizes that everything is interconnected, that we can't truly understand what is happening in the world by boiling things down to just bare facts, that paying attention our emotional response to the world helps us understand the world.

Wulf traces both Humbolt's influences and those he influenced, but is those he influenced that is the most remarkable. From Darwin to Thoreau to Muir, traces Humbolt's grand ideas through to the birth of the beginnings of the environmentalism. She makes a powerful argument that we still have much to learn from Humbolt.

As thrilling as Humbolt's travels in South America are, Wulf's telling of the journey of his idea is more more thrilling still.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is fascinated with science, but still looks up at the stars with wonder. You will find kindrid spirits in Humbolt and those who were inspired by him