Unlock Now The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration And The Roots Of American Environmentalism Engineered By Aaron Sachs Released Through Publication

masterly intellectual history of the impact ofthcentury explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American culture and science

The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldtachieved unparalleled fame in his own time.
Today, his enormous legacy to American thought is virtually unknown, In The Humboldt Current, Aaron Sachs seeks to reverse this obscurity by tracing Humboldts pervasive influence on American history, specifically looking at the lives and careers of four explorers: J.
N. Reynolds, the founder of theU, S. Exploring Expedition Clarence King, the first director of the U, S. Geological Survey George Wallace Melville, chief engineer on the disastrousJeannette expedition to the North Pole and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, In Sachss view, all four of these men were alienated Romantics who used Humboldts notion of “unity in diversity” as a way of critiquing their increasingly industrialized society.
Moreover, as Sachs argues, their examples laid the groundwork for an ecological tradition even more radical than the one that has come down to us today, Sachss treatment of Humboldts legacy also includes discussions of the writers and artists most in his debt: Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Poe, and Frederic Church, Reminiscent of Louis Menands bestselling The Metaphysical Club, The Humboldt Current is a colorful, superbly written and carefully researched work that offers a fundamental reinterpretation of nineteenth century American history.
Interesting, but a little dry, Learning so much from this beautifully written book, . . Nov.

. Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: NineteenthCentury Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalismpages

A history of the influence of Alexander von Humboldt on the science and culture of nineteenthcentury America, with special reference to exploration although art and literature are dealt with as well.
The book is divided into four parts: the first is an account of Humboldt's ideas and their direct influence in the United States the second deals with J.
N. Reynolds and the project to explore Antarctica and contains some information about Captain Symmes' hollow Earth theory the third is a life of Clarence King and his explorations in the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevadas the fourth is about Admiral George Wallace Melville and the earlier life of John Muir, and their explorations in the Arctic.
There is a final chapter and epilogue tracing the later history of the environmental movement and its failings, The Humboldtian influence becomes less as time goes on, though never quite disappearing, The information in the book was very interesting as was the author's viewpoint on the problems of modern environmentalism, although I would have liked more emphasis on the actual science of the expeditions, and I think Sachs spent too much time discussing whether the subjects were gay or not.
The best books are those that make you think in a different way or from another perspective, They also pique your interest in a subject so that you want to know more,

The Humboldt Current is such a book, It takes you through many aspects of history, opening plenty of doors, Alexander von Humboldt is not very well known, and he should be, as should J, N. Reynolds, Clarence King, George Wallace Melville, Sachs added a new perspective to John Muir and the conservation movement,

It added extra appreciation to Frederick Edwin Church's painting, Chimborazo,in the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Garden,

This is not only a book about exploration, but about how we see the world, It opened my eyes wider,

To quote near the end of the book pp
By celebrating only faraway "wilderness" areas allegedly full of biodiversity, we tacitly endorse the industrial system that has fractured our society and devastated the environments where the majority of Americans live.
We seem to have forgotten that all places are connected and, ultimately, equally valuable, that life depends on all the mutually dependent features of the cosmos, This book provides a readable and interesting account of Humboldt and the development of ecological and environmental thought through the nineteenth and midtwentieth centuries, The sections of the book focus on particular figures, first Humboldt himself, then explorer/promoter J, N. Reynolds, geologist and mountaineer Clarence King, and then George Wallace Melville and John Muir, While King and John Muir are perhaps best known popularly today, the stories of J, N. Reynolds who believed in Symme's theory of a hole at the pole that would lead to the center of the Earth, at least for a

while, . . and George Wallace Melville a naval officer and explorer on the failed Arctic expedition of the "Jeanette" were exceptionally interesting to me, Author Aaron Sachs uses the stories of these men to trace the development of ideas about systematic ecology, exploration as a scientific tool to understand the cosmos, and the arguments about man's place in or outside of nature and the environment into context.
The reader of this book will gain a greater appreciation for the impact of the thought of Alexander von Humboldt on science and society today, I really liked it a lot, and it was well written and the narrative flowed nicely! Concluding chapter was exceptional the author tied up all of his ideas in an eloquent manner.
Stupendously amazing book on a longforgotten figure in American botany, exploration, and environmentalism, First/of the book is key for all fields listed above, Other wonderful chapters on Muir, polar exploration, etcgood in and of themselves but a bit stretched in terms of the core thesis of the book, Sad it took me so long to get to this! An interesting history of Alexander von Humboldt's influence on environmental thought including a newtome interpretation of John Muir's environmentalism.
Nice solid review of Humboldt's influence on American explorers and thinkers Abandoned, Just a lousy book. The author's thesis is that everything in the world is connected, and I know this because he tells us thistimes in the firstpages, You're better off getting bios of the individual explorers covered in the book, or even better, getting their original published works, What a waste. Knocked my socks off. This is how history books should be written ok, except for the chapter on Clarence King, . . I loved reading about Humboldt himself and the connections with Whitman and Muir are fascinating, But I must confess I skimmed the last half of the book, Great footnotes. Great encouragement for integrating the social into the natural, expanding our idea of habitat to include social justice, Humbolt was a largerthanlife figure in the mids, but after WWI, he fell off the map, His ideas were extremely influential among major scientists, biologists, and naturalists who we still revere today, from John Muir to Charles Darwin, Humbolt's polymath approach to everything was reflected in his driving conviction that nature is an interconnected, interdependent web, He was ahead of his time, Unfortunately, once I got the author's main idea, I lost interest and didn't finish the book, .