The Passage to Cosmos
Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards

Acknowledgments
Preface: Romancing the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Prologue: Humboldt’s Bridge
Chapter 1: Confluences
Humboldt’s America
Humboldt’s Europe
A New Earth and a New Heaven
Chapter 2: Passage to America, 1799–1804
Portals and Passages
The Casiquiare Crossing
High Peaks and Hanging Valleys
Chapter 3: Manifest Destinies
Humboldt’s Visit to the United States, 1804
The Humboldt Network
The Many Faces of Humboldtian Science
By Land and by Sea
Interchapter: Finally Shall Come the Poet
Chapter 4: “All are alike designed for freedom”: Humboldt on Race and Slavery
(De)Constructing Race
(Re)Constructing Race
Humboldt and American Slavery
Chapter 5: The Community of Cosmos
Franz Boas, Cosmographer
Introducing Humboldt’s Cosmos
Behold the Earth
Chapter 6: The Face of Planet America
The Apocalypse of Mind: Emerson and Poe
The Face of Nature: Thoreau, Church, and Whitman
Dwelling: Susan Cooper, Muir, Marsh
Epilogue: Recalling Cosmos
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
"Not the least of the qualities of Dassow Walls’ erudite and wide-ranging narrative is that she enables us to understand something of the man’s genius and polymathic range. Humboldt’s fundamental assumption, she tells us, was that neither humans nor nature could be understood in isolation."—Jeremy Jennings, Times Higher Education
Choice Magazine: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Awards
Won
Modern Language Association of America: James Russell Lowell Prize
Won
Organization of American Historians: Merle Curti Intellectual History Award
Won
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts: Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize
Won
Biological Sciences: Natural History
Geography: Cultural and Historical Geography
History: American History | Latin American History
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