Bøker av Laura Dassow Walls

Explorer, scientist, writer, and humanist, Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous intellectual of the age that began with Napoleon and ended with Darwin. This title traces Humboldt's ideas for "Cosmos" to his 1799 journey to the Americas, where he first experienced the diversity of nature and of the world's people.

Considering Thoreau as a serious, committed scientist, this book offers an alternative understanding of his accomplishment and the place of science in American literature. It shows how Thoreau's experience reveals the interaction between Romanticism and the dynamic, law-seeking science of its day.