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Humboldt's Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey that Changed the Way We See the World

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This is the story of Alexander Von Humboldt's five-year journey of exploration in the New World (1799-1804). Humboldt was in his late twenties, a German aristocrat of independent means, brilliant and filled with boundless energy and enthusiasm. He set out with the idealistic belief that all of Nature (including humans) was an integrated entity which could be understood and defined by exacting scientific measurement. Quite a modern conviction for the 18th century! He returned to Europe internationally famous, acclaimed by readers of his widely published reports who found his constructive spirit a welcome relief from the current realities of the Napoleonic Wars.

Humboldt, his companion Bonpland, occasional fellow travelers, and a small coterie of native handlers and guides explored the upper reaches of the Orinoco River, deep in the impenetrable jungle bordering the Amazon watershed. They traveled in narrow dugout canoes, heavy with personnel, dunnage and scientific measuring equipment and boxes for their growing collection of specimens. They portaged rapids, slept in the wet, swatted mosquitoes and were constantly at the mercy of predators and exotic diseases. Later they traversed the tall rugged Andes in Equador and Peru, studying and recording everything around them. They paid particular attention to the great volcanoes, some over 20,000 feet, climbed them and contemplated their geological formation and established cutting edge scientific theories. Finally they journeyed through the more inhabited areas of Mexico and Cuba, recording anthropological, social, and political observations in addition to their continuing scientific studies of nature. Humboldt paid particular attention to the institution of slavery, which he abhorred.

Three cheers for Gerard Helferich who has given us this enthralling story of a nearly forgotten significant man. His book is carefully researched and documented, brilliantly organized and written. It is a thoroughly readable text. I read it rapidly with avaricious delight!!

Humboldt was a truly extraordinary character. He was a mixture of adventurer and scientist that has rarely been seen, especially with such developed expertise in both areas. This biography covers Humboldt's entire life, with special focus on his trip to Latin America between 1799 and 1804.

This book is written as an interesting narrative, explaining with only passing remarks the actual science behind his achievements. Advances that Humboldt made cover such different fields as botany, geology, geography, anthropology, climatology, magnetism, among others. The book is very good at outlining the spirit of those discoveries; if you would like an actual explanation, look in the Personal Narratives that Humboldt wrote himself.

As an adventurer, he criss crossed South America at a time when much of it was yet undiscovered and uncharted. He mapped the Casiquiare canal, which at the time was a legendary connection between the Amazon and Orinoco basins. He made it from Venezuela to Peru, climbing in the process some of the highest mountains in Latin America (including the Chimborazo, which at the time was believed to be the highest mountain in the world and yet unclimbed). He was for many years the high altitude record holder of the world.

It is amazing such a towering figure is not remembered among the ranks of Einstein, Da Vinci or Darwin. I highly recommend this book and finding out more about Humboldt, especially if you enjoy science, travel or adventure writing.

So pleasant how Helferich takes us back to the time when any man with enough interest and endurance could be a cutting-edge scientist and an explorer. When Alexander von Humboldt explored the northern part of the South American Continent, he observed and recorded everything -- the people, local flora and fauna, the geology, the temperature as a function of latitude and elevation, latitude by the elevation of the sun and stars, and longitude, estimated or reckoned with precision with the help of transit data of planetary moons. One of the most interesting passage was his field experimentation with animal electricity from electric eels and the conclusions about electricity in muscles and nerves that he was able to draw. Oh, Alexander von Humboldt, where are you now? Probably living in the spirit of Professor Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

The subject of the book was amazing. Humboldt traveled and studied everything: geology, botany, sociology, geography, anthropology, archaeology, and astronomy. He created a new science, plant geology. He traveled all over South America and Central America. He was well loved everywhere he went. The book was a spellbinding read.

The only minor downside of the book is it does drag in the middle. Humboldt travels to many places and the author almost does a day-by-day journal. The amount of detail and the hundreds of locations just gets boring, but I stress, on the whole, the book relates a fascinating story about the most fascinating forgotten man in history. Putting the book down is hard.

To understand modern science, this book is a must read. This one man influences the development of almost every branch of science and contributes to the abolishment of slavery in several different countries. The book provides a glimpse into history that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thank you, Gerard Helferich for Humboldt's Cosmos! Although I had heard of Alexander von Humboldt I had no idea of the scope of the man's accomplishments. He was one of those "one-in-a-million" individuals who when most adventurers would have said, "That's enough; I'm going home now.." he just kept on going, and going, and going - something like that proverbial bunny that just doesn't know how to quit or when enough is enough. In fact, it's amazing von Humboldt and Bonpland survived the host of crocodiles, piranha, treacherous mountain passes, tropical diseases, rebellious natives, bandits, to name but a few of the "challenges" set before them. You were right when you provided the analogy of von Humboldt being like Einstein who, while developing his theory of Relativity, also managed to conquer Mount Everest. In my view, Humboldt's Cosmos is quite an accomplishment. The author took great pains to provide valuable context as the journeys unfolded. If there is a flaw it is, like the explorer himself, because the book did tend to go on and on through page after page of unbroken text. Although at first excited, and then humbled as we followed Humboldt's every move and thought down every river and over every mountain pass, by the end the reader is left somewhat exhausted. Also, there was no reference - perhaps because there is no concrete evidence one way or the other - about what Humboldt thought, or would have thought, about Darwin's theory expressed in his in his, "Origin of the Species". Presumably, Darwin had let him in on his controversial theory in the years before he decided to publish it. We know they met, but did they discuss it? Perhaps Humboldt was an enthusiastic supporter, if not admirer. Or perhaps his time had, by then, come and gone, and he had nothing to say that had not already been said or was being said by others.

You may vaguely recognize the name Alexander von Humboldt (especially if you recall seeing his statue outside of the American Museum of Natural History in New York), but he's not as famous as he should be. Before Darwin ever set foot on the Beagle, von Humboldt and his crew set out on an unprecedented five-year journey throughout Latin America, traveling through the Amazon and the Andes, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Cuba. Throughout his journey, Humboldt make painstaking observations -about the land, the flora and fauna, the wind and the currents, and the peoples he encountered - and his notes and ideas helped shape entirely new disciplines in science: he was a hero to the young Charles Darwin. While there have been a flood of books championing individuals who were "footnotes" to science and history, Humboldt was the real deal. This informative but very lively book, written on the 200th anniversary of Humboldt's most famous journey, should help restore Humboldt's reputation as a pioneering scientist and thinker.

This book is a scintillating adventure and science story about one of the world's most important and, curiously least known, figures, the dashing Alexander von Humboldt, who in the course of five years blazed a five thousand mile swath through Latin America, including Cuba, Mexico, and what is now Venezuela, Ecuador, Columbia and Peru. He and his traveling companion Aime Bonpland conducted the first extensive scientific exploration of these countries. In the course of their incredible journey, completed two hundred years ago, the two climbed Chimborazo, coming within 1300 feet of the summit, an event that wasn't to be surpassed until Whymper conquered the peak in the 1880's. I highly recommend this book for anybody interested in adventure, science, and history.

This is a good biography of an underappreciated figure in the history of science. Alexander von Humboldt (the von was added as an honorific for his life's achievements) was a Renaissance man of the early nineteenth century, whose ambition was nothing less than a complete understanding of our natural world. To that end he made himself an expert in zoology, botany, geography, geology, meterology, and astronomy, and then embarked on a multi-year exploration of the Caribbean, Central and South America with a friend. It's a miracle that either of them survived, as they battled tropical diseases, hostile people both indigenous and foreign, storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and barely navigable rivers. Humboldt was indefatigable, climbing numerous peaks, exploring uncharted territory, constantly observing, mapping, and collecting specimens. After returning to Europe he produced many classic works which significantly advanced all the above-named sciences as well as pioneering the fields of demography, ethnography, oceanography, and climatology. His works were foundational for Darwin, among others, and foreshadowed many of the most important subsequent developments in natural science, including the theory of evolution and the theory of plate tectonics, to name just two. He was widely regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest scientist and naturalist of his day, but he is no longer nearly as well known. This book does a good job of explaining his life's work and its importance.

Humboldt was a universal scientific genius who was also a genuine explorer into the wild. He had a mercurial personality and progressive political views. He was, in short, one of the most interesting people who have ever lived. Unfortunately, Helferich writes like a committee. His prose is clear in the way a company's annual report is clear. As a study of Humboldt's South American journey, the book is 100% derivative but it provides some basic information and has the advantage of being readily accessible. Basically the book is a retelling of Humboldt's own narrative, with too-few asides providing modern information on topics to which Humboldt turned his curiosity.

I found this history of Humboldt and his companion, Aime Bonpland,
fascinating. I wish more explorers had had the vision and understanding that Humboldt carried with him in his approach to nature and to humanity during his travels in Latin American. Civilization would have been much more advanced and noble for it.