Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent: Abridged Edition (Penguin Classics)

One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art, to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America, his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture, causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics.'

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Views of Nature
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
• Cosmos: Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe Volume 1 (Cambridge Library Collection - Physical Sciences)
• The Voyage of the Beagle
• Principles of Geology (Penguin Classics)
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
• Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel
• Essay on the Geography of Plants
• Cosmos: A Sketch or a Physical Description of the Universe
• Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life