The Alpine Enlightenment

Reviews / Votes

"As a form of microcosmic/macrocosmic correspondence, Kete's scrupulously researched text identifies Saussure with the higher aims of human endeavor, with the Enlightenment's penetrating rigor, and with a pursuit of knowledge through systematic enquiry and elemental union with nature's 'sensorium.'" * Leonardo * "Kete's book is knowledgeable, engaging, and original. With its spatial arrangement of the chapters, it is also suitable for cultural tourism purposes. Those interested can take it on a hike on site, where many tours around and on Mont Blanc are offered today. In paperback format, the book fits well in the backpack." * H-Soz-Kult * "The Alpine Enlightenment is at once a study of a major Swiss savant's hard-headed love affair with the Alps, a plea for the singularly respectful view of nature that he embodied, and a vivid evocation of the Swiss milieu from which he came. The author makes a powerful case for seeing Horace-Benedict de Saussure's view of nature as scrupulously empirical and based on tangible bodily experience, vividly explaining how his life in Geneva and in the mountains fashioned his understanding of the natural world." * John Brewer, California Institute of Technology * "In this innovative and exciting environmental biography, Kete places Saussure in an expanding set of contexts from family and home, through the urban milieu of his native Geneva and the trans-European sociability of Enlightenment science, to the mountain on the horizon. The Alpine Enlightenment is a sensitive study that shows how Saussure's own alertness to his bodily, sensorial, emotional, and aesthetic relationship with the Alps led him to a new and personally engaged sense of humanity's relationship to nature." * Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London *