Malaprop’s is beyond excited to welcome award winning author, historian, and biographer Andrea Wulf to their store on Sunday, May 1st at 5:00 pm.
Many of you will recognize the name: her latest book The Invention of Nature has been on our best seller list as well as the NY Times 10 Best Books of 2015 list. She will be hosted by Victoria Johnson, Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, for what is certain to be an enriching and stimulating talk.
This is a first come, first seated event and we expect to be filled to capacity. We advise you to arrive early to ensure a seat.
The Invention of Nature reveals the extraordinary life of the visionary German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and how he created the way we understand nature today. Though almost forgotten today, his name lingers everywhere from the Humboldt Current to the Humboldt penguin. Humboldt was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world, paddling down the Orinoco or racing through anthrax–infested Siberia. Perceiving nature as an interconnected global force, Humboldt discovered similarities between climate zones across the world and predicted human-induced climate change. He turned scientific observation into poetic narrative, and his writings inspired naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth and Goethe but also politicians such as Jefferson. Wulf also argues that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden. Wulf traces Humboldt’s influences through the great minds he inspired in revolution, evolution, ecology, conservation, art and literature. In The Invention of Nature Wulf brings this lost hero to science and the forgotten father of environmentalism back to life.
Praise for The Invention of Nature
“Wulf does much to revive our appreciation of this ecological visionary through her lively, impressively researched account of his travels and exploits, reminding us of the lasting influence of his primary insight: that the Earth is a single, interconnected organism, one that can be catastrophically damaged by our own destructive actions.” – New York Times Sunday Book Review, 10 Best Books of 2015
“Like Humboldt himself, The Invention of Nature is scholarly but extremely good fun” – The Times
“A thrilling new biography. … Wulf’s book is as much a history of those ideas as it is of the man. The man may be lost but his ideas have never been more alive … In our Anthropocene age Humboldt’s theories read like prophecy. More important, they offer wisdom about the way forward. It is impossible to read The Invention of Nature without contracting Humboldt fever. Wulf makes Humboldtians of us all. … At times The Invention of Nature reads like pulp explorer fiction … She has gone to near-Humboldtian lengths to research her book” – New York Review of Books
“The accomplished historian delivers an inspired biography of the German polymath, explorer, prescient proto-environmentalist and discoverer of climate zones” – Nature
Please visit www.malaprops.com for additional information.