Stephen T. Jackson is professor emeritus of botany and ecology at the University of Wyoming and the editor of von Humboldt's Essay on the Geography of Plants. He lives in Tucson, AZ. Laura Dassow Walls is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and the author of several books, including The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America. She lives in Granger, IN. Mark W. Person is associate academic professional lecturer in German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and director of the language lab at the University of Wyoming. He lives in Laramie, WY.
Ever since his celebrated journey of exploration of the Americas, Alexander von Humboldt has been a defining figure of Western scientific culture. Today, his international reputation is enjoying a revival, especially in North America. Now the University of Chicago Press is adding to its list of Humboldtiana a new edition of von Humboldt's most readable book, Views of Nature, skillfully translated from the original German and expertly introduced. It opens up to a twenty-first-century readership the magnificent panorama of tropical American landscapes, the aesthetic pleasure of which connoted--in von Humboldt's view--the underlying harmony of lawlike unity that pervades the cosmos. --Nicolaas Rupke, Washington and Lee University author of Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography