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The Invention of Nature
- The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 14 hrs and 3 mins
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The Invention of Nature
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Publisher's summary
Winner of the Costa Biography Award 2015. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize 2015 (Science and Technology). Shortlisted for the Independent Book Week Award 2016.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist: more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast; there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolívar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.
Critic reviews
"Brilliant." ( Sunday Express)
"Extraordinary and gripping." ( New Scientist)
"A superb biography." ( The Economist)
"An exhilarating armchair voyage." (Giles Milton, Mail on Sunday)
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- By Roger on 03-03-17
By: Randall Fuller
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Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
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Jungle of Stone
- The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
- By: William Carlsen
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 606
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 541
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 544
In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unsung Explorers at the Heart of History
- By thomas on 01-10-17
By: William Carlsen
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Founding Gardeners
- The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Antonia Bath
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 201
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 165
From the author of the acclaimed The Brother Gardeners, a fascinating look at the founding fathers from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen, and farmers. For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. These stories reveal a guiding but previously overlooked ideology of the American Revolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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"Outstanding Listen"
- By C. on 05-06-11
By: Andrea Wulf
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The Man Who Loved China
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 600
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 369
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 370
No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire.
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5 out of 5 stars
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turn your watch back 70 years
- By Andy on 05-22-08
By: Simon Winchester
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Between Man and Beast
- An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure that Took the Victorian World By Storm
- By: Monte Reel
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 77
In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness of West Africa determined to bag an animal that, according to legend, was nothing short of a monster. When he emerged three years later, the summation of his efforts only hinted at what he'd experienced in one of the most dangerous regions on earth. Armed with an astonishing collection of zoological specimens, Du Chaillu leapt from the physical challenges of the jungle straight into the center of the biggest issues of the time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Extraordinary book! Masterpiece.
- By BVerité on 04-23-13
By: Monte Reel
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The Adventures of Henry Thoreau
- A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
- By: Michael Sims
- Narrated by: David Rapkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
Henry David Thoreau has long been an intellectual icon and folk hero. In this strikingly original profile, Michael Sims reveals how the bookish, quirky young man evolved into the patron saint of environmentalism and nonviolent activism. Working from 19th-century letters and diaries, Sims charts Henry’s course from his time at Harvard through the years he spent living in a cabin beside Walden Pond. Sims uncovers a previously hidden Thoreau - the rowdy boy reminiscent of Tom Sawyer, the sarcastic college iconoclast, the devoted son who kept imitating his beloved older brother’s choices in life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pleasant surprise
- By Norman Wendth on 10-21-14
By: Michael Sims
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River of the Gods
- Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile
- By: Candice Millard
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,462
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,282
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,277
For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe—and extend their colonial empires.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good book by Millard, narrator ruined it
- By Tally D Lykins on 05-25-22
By: Candice Millard
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The Promise of the Grand Canyon
- John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West
- By: John F. Ross
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
John Wesley Powell’s first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 counts among the most dramatic chapters in American exploration history. When the Canyon spit out the surviving members of the expedition - starving, battered, and nearly naked - they had accomplished what others thought impossible and finished the exploration of continental America that Lewis and Clark had begun almost 70 years before.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Parallels
- By Bruce McClenahan on 01-25-19
By: John F. Ross
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Mirage
- Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt
- By: Nina Burleigh
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Little more than 200 years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. Its history and peoples were the subject of much myth and speculation: and no region aroused greater interest than Egypt.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A lesson in history
- By —- on 01-05-10
By: Nina Burleigh
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The Discoverers
- A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin
- Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4 out of 5 stars 90
Why didn't the Chinese discover America? Why were people so slow to learn the earth goes around the sun? How and why did we begin to think of "species" of plants and animals? How, when, and why did people begin digging in the earth to learn about the past? How did the study of economics begin? These are but a few of the fascinating questions answered by Dr. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress Emeritus.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of my Top 10 Fav. Books!
- By shannonnn on 05-09-05
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Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
- John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
- By: Wallace Stegner
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 335
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 266
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 264
Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner recounts the remarkable career of Major John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of the Southwest Indian tribes. This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the Powell’s career, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, in which Powell and his men famously became the first to descend the Colorado River, to his eventual expulsion from the Geological Survey.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History repeats itself.
- By Roy on 09-12-11
By: Wallace Stegner
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The Jesuit and the Skull
- Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man
- By: Amir D. Aczel
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 160
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4 out of 5 stars 92
In December 1929, in a cave near Peking, a group of anthropologists and archaeologists that included a young French Jesuit priest named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin uncovered a prehuman skull. The find quickly became known around the world as Peking Man and was acclaimed as the missing link between erect hunting apes and our Cro-Magnon ancestors. It also became a provocative piece of evidence in the roiling debate over creationism versus evolution.
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3 out of 5 stars
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More skull than Jesuit
- By connie on 10-25-07
By: Amir D. Aczel
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Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
- The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 461
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 404
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 406
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, Egan's book tells the remarkable untold story behind Edward Curtis's iconic photographs, following him throughout Indian country from desert to rainforest as he struggled to document the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. Even with the backing of Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan, it took tremendous perseverance. The undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate.
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5 out of 5 stars
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STUPENDOUS!
- By Curious Artist Librarian on 10-29-12
By: Timothy Egan
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Gertrude Bell
- Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations
- By: Georgina Howell
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shattering The Glass Ceiling in Britain
- By Nostromo on 08-05-18
By: Georgina Howell
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The Pioneers
- The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,979
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,299
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4,271
The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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i would prefer david reading it
- By hooterwah on 05-07-19
By: David McCullough
What listeners say about The Invention of Nature
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Michael Hall
- 11-30-16
An engaging, interesting read on a fascinating man
A very enjoyable read about a fastinating man who's life was well lived and who has had far reaching influence during his lifetime and to present day. A vital part of anyone's reading collection who is interested in science writing and the environment. Michael Hall -Environmental photographer
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dr A S Menon-Johansson
- 08-27-22
A riveting read about a such a fascinating man
The life, literature and legacy of Professor Alexander von Humbolt is beautifully written by Andrea Wulf. A must read for anyone who would like to hear about the man who opened the worlds eyes to the wonders of nature, science and the growing impact of humankind.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Drone Boy
- 12-01-20
Top Science History
This book is a small masterpiece and a must for anyone interested in the history of science, ecology, romanticism, and environmentalism. There is never a dull moment in Wulf's book, which follows Humboldt from the University of Jenna, Goethe, to revolutionary France, the Amazons, the new republic of America, and back to Germany. The chapters on Darwin, Thoreau, and Haeckel are also fascinating. The style of writing is vivid and this audio reading is captivating. One criticism. I think the amount of emphasis placed on Humboldt influence on the modern idea of nature is a little overblown. The argument is very much a "great man in history" argument. Having said this, this is a great book.
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