Alexander von Humboldt was once as famous as Charles Darwin—a street and a park were named for him in Milwaukee. But the German explorer, scientist and pioneer environmentalist was largely forgotten until Andrea Wulf’s award-winning 2015 biography, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World. Wulf returns with The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, a graphic narrative that follows him on his 1799 trek through South America. The coffee table-size book’s illustrator, Lillian Melcher, composed the lavish-looking pages with snippets of Humboldt’s notebooks and drawings, both painterly and cartoon-derived. Humboldt sketched the landscape, discovered fossils, drew maps and came to a deeper awareness of humanity’s relationship with nature. It’s an illuminating story told in a beautiful format.
