ANDREA WULF

I do several different talks but for Latin America, the Humboldt talk is the best one. I can focus on different aspects for the talk – from climate change to the importance of bringing together the arts and the science, to Humboldt’s travels in South America. The exact focus can be discussed with the client.

Invention of Nature. Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

In this beautifully illustrated talk, award winning and bestselling author Andrea Wulf tells the story of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the great scientist and intrepid explorer who has more things named after him than anyone else. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether exploring deep into the rainforest or climbing the world’s highest volcanoes. He turned scientific observation into poetic narrative, and his writings inspired naturalists and poets such as Darwin and Goethe but also politicians such as Jefferson and Bolivar. Humboldt explained nature as a complex web of life and interconnected global force – a concept that still shapes our thinking today. He described earth as a living organism that could easily be destroyed by humankind and predicted harmful human–induced climate change already in 1800. In her popular talks, Wulf brings this forgotten father of environmentalism back to life.

Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation 

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.

Andrea Wulf reveals for the first time this aspect of the revolutionary generation. She describes how, even as British ships gathered off Staten Island, George Washington wrote his estate manager about the garden at Mount Vernon; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; how a trip to the great botanist John Bartram’s garden helped the delegates of the Constitutional Congress break their deadlock; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of American environmentalism. These and other stories reveal a guiding but previously overlooked ideology of the American Revolution.

Founding Gardeners adds depth and nuance to our understanding of the American experiment and provides us with a portrait of the founding fathers as they’ve never before been seen.

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self 

A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ From the best-selling author of The Invention of Nature comes an exhilarating story about a remarkable group of young rebels—poets, novelists, philosophers—who, through their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heartbreaking grief, and radical ideas launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some of the greatest thinkers of the time.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York TimesThe Washington Post

"Make[s] the reader feel as if they were in the room with the great personalities of the age, bearing witness to their insights and their vanities and rages.”—Lauren Groff, New York Times best-selling author of Matrix

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 a quiet university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom.

The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science, the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will.