Andrea Wulf

One morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London's Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram in the American colonies. It was not bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds...Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever.

In the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena, through poetry, drama, philosophy and science, they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics. Their way of understanding the world still frames our lives and being. This extraordinary group of friends changed our world. It is impossible to imagine our lives, thoughts and understanding without the foundation of their ground-breaking ideas.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - his colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story. Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps, Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today.