作者：AndreaWulf
出版社：Knopf
副标题：AlexandervonHumboldt'sNewWorld
出版年：2015-9-15
页数：496
定价：USD30.00
装帧：Hardcover
ISBN：9780385350662
内容简介
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The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirteen towns, a river, parks, bays, lakes, and mountains. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether he was climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infected Siberia or translating his research into bestselling publications that changed science and thinking. Among Humboldt’s most revolutionary ideas was a radical vision of nature, that it is a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone.
Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.
With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.
作者简介
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ANDREA WULF was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in London, where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. She is the author of Chasing Venus, Founding Gardeners, and The Brother Gardeners, which was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and awarded the American Horticultural Society Book Award. She has written for The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. She appears regularly on radio and TV, and in 2014 copresented British Gardens in Time, a four-part series on BBC television.
www.andreawulf.com
评论 ······
想要重读丈量世界的时候，搜出来了这本书，非常通史了。
写得比较杂 似乎是洪堡一生的事迹也不够填满一本书 而对于其他人物/事件的介绍如果是第一次看还有意思 如果本身就比较熟悉 就有些重复了
百科全书式学者的消失并不是偶然的，自然科学的演化已经超越了观察和经验所及，所以洪堡本人也算是最后之人吧。作者花了很多笔墨描写洪堡的社交圈和影响力，大概也是想强调洪堡的个例性，最后200页的索引真心佩服。下一步要把Cosmos找出来读读。
在书柜里躺灰很久又拿了出来，发现英文版还是能看得懂的。那种一刻不停探索未知领域的热切，蛮久违的，希望自己也还有。
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