Search results for ""Author Vera M Kutzinski""

Alexander von Humboldt was the most celebrated modern chronicler of North and South America and the Caribbean, and this translation of his essay on New Spain--the first modern regional economic and political geography--covers his travels across today's Mexico in 1803-04. The work canvases both natural-scientific and cultural-scientific objects alike, combining the results of fieldwork with archival research and expert testimony. To show how people, plants, animals, goods, and ideas moved across the globe, Humboldt wrote in a variety of styles, bending and reshaping familiar writerly conventions to keep readers attentive to new inputs. Above all, he wanted his readers to keep an open mind when confronted with cultural and other differences in the Americas. Fueled by his comparative global perspective on politics, economics, and science, he used his writing to support Latin American independence and condemn slavery and other forms of colonial exploitation. It is these voluminous and innovative writings on the New World that made Humboldt the undisputed father of modern geography, early American studies, transatlantic cultural history, and environmental studies. This two-volume critical edition--the third installment in the Alexander von Humboldt in English series--is based on the full text, including all footnotes, tables, and maps, of the second, revised French edition of Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne from 1825-27, which has never been translated into English before. Extensive annotations and full-color atlases are available on the series website.

Read more less

The research Alexander von Humboldt amassed during his five-year trek through the Americas in the early nineteenth century proved foundational to the fields of botany, geography, and geology. But his visit to Cuba during this time yielded observations that extended far beyond the natural world. "Political Essay on the Island of Cuba" is a physical and cultural study of the island nation. In it, Humboldt denounces colonial slavery on both moral and economic grounds and stresses the vital importance of improving intercultural relations throughout the Americas. Humboldt's most controversial book, "Political Essay on the Island of Cuba" was banned, censored, and willfully mistranslated to suppress Humboldt's strong antislavery sentiments. It re-emerges here, newly translated from the original two-volume French edition, to introduce a new generation of readers to Humboldt's astonishing multiplicity of scientific and philosophical perspectives. In their critical introduction, Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette emphasize Humboldt's rare ability to combine scientific rigor with a cosmopolitan consciousness and a deeply felt philosophical humanism. The result is a work on Cuba of historical import that will attract historians of science as well as cultural historians, political scientists, and literary scholars.

Read more less

In 1799, Alexander von Humboldt and Aime Bonpland set out to determine whether the Orinoco River connected with the Amazon. But what started as a trip to investigate a relatively minor geographical controversy became the basis of a five-year exploration throughout South America, Mexico, and Cuba. The discoveries amassed were staggering, and much of today's knowledge of tropical zoology, botany, geography, and geology can be traced back to von Humboldt's numerous records of these expeditions. One of these accounts, "Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas", firmly established von Humboldt as the founder of Mesoamerican studies. In Views of the Cordilleras, von Humboldt weaves together drawings and detailed texts to achieve multifaceted views of cultures and landscapes across the Americas. In doing so, he offers an alternative perspective on the New World, combating presumptions of its belatedness and inferiority by arguing that the "old" and the "new" world are of the same geological age. This critical edition contains a new, unabridged English translation of von Humboldt's French text, as well as annotations, a bibliography, and all sixty-nine plates from the original edition.

Read more less

Alexander von Humboldt was the most celebrated modern chronicler of North and South America and the Caribbean, and this translation of his essay on New Spain--the first modern regional economic and political geography--covers his travels across today's Mexico in 1803-04. The work canvases both natural-scientific and cultural-scientific objects alike, combining the results of fieldwork with archival research and expert testimony. To show how people, plants, animals, goods, and ideas moved across the globe, Humboldt wrote in a variety of styles, bending and reshaping familiar writerly conventions to keep readers attentive to new inputs. Above all, he wanted his readers to keep an open mind when confronted with cultural and other differences in the Americas. Fueled by his comparative global perspective on politics, economics, and science, he used his writing to support Latin American independence and condemn slavery and other forms of colonial exploitation. It is these voluminous and innovative writings on the New World that made Humboldt the undisputed father of modern geography, early American studies, transatlantic cultural history, and environmental studies. This two-volume critical edition--the third installment in the Alexander von Humboldt in English series--is based on the full text, including all footnotes, tables, and maps, of the second, revised French edition of Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne from 1825-27, which has never been translated into English before. Extensive annotations and full-color atlases are available on the series website.

Read more less