Reply to post #29 (show post):
LoL. It is completely subjective. I was fine with the Amazon description, but would not have minded if the philosophy parts had been longer.

Humboldt's writings seem to be on Project Gutenberg. (German originals and also translated into English.) Might also try your local library?

I think there's something on Humboldt on one of the David McCullough books I have not read, Brave Companions.

Reply to post #30 (show post):
And the paperback is still in print! Woot!

Here's the publisher page for it in English. It's an abridged edition, but it doesn't say what's been abridged: did they just remove the entries that were boring ("woke up, brushed teeth, cataloged my plants, ate dinner, went to bed") or did they exercise editorial control for brevity ... 5 years is a lot of diary.

Still, I think I'm going to have to buy it. The booklikes page is here too, if anyone else is interested.

In Wulf's defence, though the Amazon chapters were brief, I did get a good sense of how miserable a trip it must have been. I'm not sure I'd have been so willing to bathe every day with the number of crocodiles they reported in the water with them - lookout or no lookout. And what about piranhas??? And that 'extension' they had to build onto the boat that just sounded like a solar oven mosquito feeding box - ugh! Never mind the parts where the jungle was so thick they couldn't even beach the boats. She was brief, but she did draw a pretty atmospheric picture in the small space she had to do it in.

Also, truthfully, I think I didn't mind the brevity of those chapters, because I really didn't like the animal collection stuff - I know, it's science, but I hate it. And the part with the electric eels - UGH!!! I skimmed that section when I realised where it was going, but I'm still not going to get those horses out of my mind for a very long time. And I really could have done without that illustration dammit.

I finished Part II last night; I hadn't planned on it, but when I finished chapter 7 and realised chapter 8 was about Humboldt meeting Thomas Jefferson, I couldn't resist.

I expected a chapter that discussed the similarities in interests between Humboldt and Jefferson, but I was surprised to read about the political intelligence he shared regarding Mexico. Not surprised he did it, but surprised that the founding fathers had so very little information to start with regarding a bordering country, that Humboldt's general observations were so incredibly valuable to them politically. He didn't spy or do anything duplicitous, he just did what he set out to do, and as any good scientist would, shared his findings when he was asked to. But I'm in a science mindset, so the political usefulness of his observations felt unexpected to me.

The other thing I never really thought about before is the whole idea of cash crops. I mean, I know about cash crops and their importance to economies and devastation to the environment, but Wulf (or Humboldt really) mentioned something that never before occurred to me: cash crops are not nutritional food crops. Cotton and indigo aren't, of course, but tobacco and sugar... no country could live off those crops. As soon as I read it, I thought "of course not" but before last night, I'd never thought about it from a larger self-sufficiency perspective. Humboldt did, and while Jefferson agreed with him that a varied agriculture is what ensured freedom and prosperity, I wonder if he thought about cash crops the same way. Given that his money came from plantations, I can't think that he really did.

I don't like the collecting and killing the animals either. And I can't fault the author for abbreviating the entire voyage.

Re: Chapter 8 - haven't read it yet, but any country that isn't interested in being self-sufficient, especially in terms of food and energy is being short-sighted and asking for trouble. You can plant cash crops for domestic and export use once you have enough basic food stuffs to feed your own people.

There is an interesting story about cotton and hemp. Apparently hemp is better than cotton in a variety of uses including clothing and grows on land that no other food crops will grow on, requires less water and fertilizer etc, but the cotton farmers ganged up and paid off the relevant politicians and got a law passed banning hemp.

Reply to post #36 (show post):
Oh, that whole thing about hemp drives me completely crazy. That law could be the poster child for societal scientific ignorance.

Yip. Politicians should be the last ones running countries/states.

There is an interesting side story in Ruth Ozeki´s "My Year of Meats" in which farmers in the south try to fight against the onslaught of Kudzu, which is a native plant in Asia. Kudzu was marketed in Amerika in the 1930ies and 40ies as a effective way to stop soil erosion (caused among others by cash crops). Unfortuntately this plant is so aggresive in its growth that it is able to overshadow and overgrow all the other plants in its vicinity and killing the native flora off.
This is surely an effective way to ruin an eco-system even more effectively.

My progress "report" for this section. I'm not very good at putting my thoughts down on paper. :(

http://elentarri.booklikes.com/post/1578417/the-invention-of-nature-by-andrea-wulf-progress-update

Uh, KUDZU.

We've finally found a solution of sorts, though - goats. Goats will eat anything.

(Weirdest play, btw, and the worst, that I've ever seen was a production of Medea, where the set was made entirely of kudzu.)

Reply to post #41 (show post):
I'm intrigued by the kudzu set. Was it that it was cheap and people wanted to use it for something?

I don't know. Nothing about that production made sense. (Also it was the wacky 70s.)

Reply to post #39 (show post):
Kudzu grows over EVERYTHING. When I lived in Georgia there was an old hotel completely swallowed up by the vine, as well as a couple of cars. In the warm season, Kudzu will grow up to 1 foot a day, about 30cm. It's insane; it's the vine that ate the South. :P

Kudzu devours all it encounters. Seriously, only goats can keep up with it.