Humboldt Current: European Explorer And His American Disci

Description:
While everyone has heard of the 'Humboldt Current', few know anything of the man after whom it was named. Yet Alexander von Humboldt was a towering figure of his time - scientist, explorer, and polymath, imbued with Enlightenment ideas - and he left a profound impact on the intellectual life of 19th century America. Aaron Sachs' colourful intellectual history rescues Humboldt from obscurity, and reveals the impact of a single European on both American thought and the environmental movement. Aaron Sachs traces Humboldt's legacy by focusing not only on the man himself but on the lives of other remarkable individuals who took their lead from him - explorers of the American mid-West, alienated Romantics, seminal American writers and artists, who together laid the groundwork for the great ecological tradition in 19th century America.

Table of Contents:
Prologue: Humboldt in America: 1804-2004; The Chain of Connection; Excursion-Exile: Napoleon's France; PART ONE - EAST; Humboldt and the Influence of Europe; Personal Narrative of a Journey: Radical Romanticism; Cosmos: Unification Ecology; Excursion-Eureka: The Death of Edgar Allan Poe; PART TWO- SOUTH; J. N. Reynolds and the 'More Comprehensive Promise' of the Antarctic; 'Rough Notes of Rough Adventures': Exploration for Exploration's Sake; 'Mocha-Dick': The Value of Mental Expansion; Excursion-Watersheds: 1859-1862; PART THREE - WEST; Clarence King's Experience of the Frontier; Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada: The Art of Self-Exposure; 'Catastrophism and the Evolution of Environment': A Science of Humility; Excursion-Yreka: Just North of Mount Shasta; PART FOUR - NORTH; George Wallace Melville and John Muir in Extremis; In the Lena Delta: Arctic Tragedy and American Imperialism; The Cruise of the Corwin: Nature, Natives, Nation; Excursion-Home: The Harriman Expedition; The Grounding of American Environmentalism; Epilogue: Humboldt on Chimborazo; Chronology; Notes; Bibliography; Index