The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism bending nature itself to their

bending nature itself to their will and their ambition: redirecting rivers

FDR’s home in Hyde Park

the northern Shawangunk Mountains today

the imagined river

vintage and contemporary photographs and rare film

The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism bending nature itself to theirThe naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769 1859) achieved unparalleled fame in his own time. Today, however, he and his enormous legacy to American thought are virtually unknown. In The Humboldt Current, Aaron Sachs traces Humboldt's pervasive influence on American history through examining the work of four explorersJ. N. Reynolds, Clarence King, George Wallace, and John Muirwho embraced Humboldt's idea of a "chain of connection" uniting