Boston Globe: The father of nature writing, intrepid explorer, friend to revolutionaries and US presidents, Alexander von Humboldt was the original scholar adventurer. Fearlessly footloose and boundlessly curious, the Prussian-born Humboldt climbed mountains, traversed rugged terrain, collected specimens, and scribbled, scribbled, scribbled from the late 18th through the mid-19th centuries as he pursued his uniquely rapturous vision of nature.
His journeys took him deep into South American jungles and across...