How the Revolutionary Generation created an American Eden

The Founding Gardeners

The New York Times bestseller - a unique portrait of the founding fathers, exploring how their passion for gardens and nature influenced the birth of the American nation.

EXCELLENT... Wulf writes enthrallingly. Wonderfully illuminating and readable

ENGROSSING... excellent ... fascinating... a timely and passionate book

SUPERB...this book will fascinate anyone interested in gardening, agriculture or American history.

WONDERFULLY ENGAGING... Her knack for description is marvelous

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT... Excellent [and] riveting

FASCINATING ... this is a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking book.

ILLUMINATING AND ENGROSSING ... eloquent and revelatory

FASCINATING ... genuinely illuminating, illustrated with a wealth of compelling detail

A follow-up to Andrea Wulf's award-winning and critically acclaimed history of British gardening, this is the story of how George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison's passion for nature, plants, agriculture and gardens shaped the birth of America. 
 
Through a series of vignettes spanning the Declaration of Independence to the death of Adams and Jefferson exactly fifty years to the day afterwards, these stories that weave the political, the personal and the botanical and are in turns funny, fascinating and moving. The Founding Gardeners shows that it is impossible to understand these visionary men and the American nation without considering their love of gardening.

Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession

The Brother Gardeners

A wonderfully readable investigation of the origins of the modern garden in 18th-century England. Popular history at its finest.

This absorbing and delightful book about 18th-century botanists stands out among histories of plant hunting ... Works superbly

Rounded, generous and exhaustively researched ... She is very adept at telling a good story, and in the history and origins of gardening she has found the perfect vehicle ... An excellent, hugely entertaining and instructive tale, and Wulf tells it very well

Wondrous ... I have learned so much from her book

Engrossing ... A gripping story, told here with grace and aplomb

Fabulous ... What an incredible account of an amazing century

A wondrous telling of the history of the very English love affair with gardens and growing things

The Brother Gardeners is a delightful book. It brings the story of 18th-century gardening to life in a remarkably vivid way, and sheds new light on the personality clashes and prejudices which lay at the root of the Georgians' passion for plants

The Brother Gardeners were a group of men involved in the 18th-century quest for new plants, at a fascinating period in garden history. Andrea Wulf brings their personalities vividly to life in her thoroughly researched and lively account.

Rosie Atkins, Curator, Chelsea Physic Garden

Immaculately written and researched, this book brings to life the dramas and dangers of eighteenth-century plant collecting

[An] engrossing history of botanical obsession in England in the 18th century ... The author has a good eye for interesting detail and a fine sense of literary economy

A 'biography' of the quintessential English garden, taking in Captain Cook, Carl Linnaeus, and the simultaneous rise of the British Empire and flower arranging - a delightful look at horticultural history

As Wulf triumphantly shows, plants and gardens reveal a wider view of the forces that shape society ... An antidote to dry garden history; rarely has the story of English plants been told with such vigour, and such fun

The best book this year is The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession

Andrea Wulf has written a wonderful book, using a clutch of fascinating men to remind us the British Empire was once as much about white pine and Camellia japonica as it was about guns and steel ... enthralling story ... brilliantly readable book

One January 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. But 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: Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary; the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany; the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on Captain Cook's Endeavour. 
 
This is the story of these men - friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants. Set against the backdrop of the emerging empire and the uncharted world beyond, The Brother Gardeners tells the story how Britain became a nation of gardeners.

The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity

The Traveller

Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in London and is the author of several books, including The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (Winner of the 2015 Costa Biography Award and the 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize) and Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self. A member of PEN American Center and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is currently a Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute.

The Traveller spreads out before us the life and times of George Forster, who journeyed to the far reaches of the known world, and whose radical ideas about humanity, equality and freedom challenged the worldviews of eighteenth-century Europe. 
 
Andrea Wulf paints a picture of a man of profound curiosity and brilliance. He joined Cook’s second voyage at the age of seventeen, an exploration of vast contrasts from the icy world of Antarctica to tropical islands of the South Pacific. Studying the diverse nature, peoples and cultures he encountered, he came back imbued with a deep belief in the equality of races – an understanding far ahead of his time. On his return he was feted in England, France, Germany and Poland, using his fame to advocate for freedom and women’s rights and against empire, racism and slavery. Wulf traces how Forster – inspired by the French Revolution – became a leader of the short-lived Republic of Mainz, before being declared an outlaw in Germany and forced into exile in Paris during the Reign of Terror. 
 
Vivid, engaging and drawing on Forster’s rich correspondence almost entirely unpublished in English, The Traveller recounts an extraordinary, passionate life largely forgotten by history.

Andrea Wulf

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful book

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expe&shy;ditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

[a] truly excellent book…Andrea Wulf tell[s] the rip-roaring tales of numerous expeditions that set off around the globe to observe the Venusian transit of 1761…[She] communicate[s] the verve and energy – not to mention the perilous nature – of the expeditions.

It charts the story of a truly international effort; to not only observe the transit ... but to present the real quest that was to finally determine the distance between the Earth and the Sun ... [an] outstanding book! It's the book of the year so far – do not miss it!

Andrea Wulf’s immaculately researched book describes the endeavours of the early scientific community to observe the transit around the world…an absorbing…exciting yarn.

Replete with meticulous detail, delightful illustrations and a cast of very familiar names from world history, Chasing Venus is an eminently readable account of humanity’s effort to chart the heavens. At once an exhilarating adventure, a tale of personal obsession, a tragedy and a detailed history of astronomical endeavour, Wulf’s latest work is a fascinating read.

The result is a human story, and it’s worth reading as a rallying call to humanity’s quest to explore the universe simple for the sake of it.

Chasing Venus is the entertaining tale of the expeditions that set off across the globe to use a transit of Venus to gain the first true measure of the size of the Solar System…captures the spirit of adventure and the wonder at mankind’s new-found ability to understand the world around it… a pleasure to read from beginning to end.

[A] thrilling, stirring tale, very well told, of global cooperation, and how the passion for Enlightenment triumphed against enormous odds.

[a] thrilling book…an absorbing, even exciting yarn

The Race to Measure the Heavens

On two days in 1761 and 1769 hundreds of astronomers pointed their telescopes towards the skies to observe a rare astronomical event: the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. 
 
United by this momentous occasion, scientists from around the globe came together to answer the essential question: how can the universe be measured? In Chasing Venus Andrea Wulf paints a vivid portrait of the rivalries, triumphs and misfortunes that befell these men, along with their passion and determination to succeed. This extraordinary book tells their story and how one single event prompted the first international scientific collaboration.

Andrea Wulf

Praise for Chasing Venus

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful ...

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expeditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful ...

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expeditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful ...

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expeditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Books by Andrea Wulf

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Praise for Chasing Venus

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful ...

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expe­ditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful ...

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expe­ditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Andrea Wulf's story of the chase is an enthralling, nail-biting thriller and will undoubtedly prove one of the non-fiction books of the year. Even if you fail to see the Transit, don't miss this wonderful ...

A fine example of scientific storytelling about astronomers of the Enlightenment observing the transit of Venus ... narrated with elegant expertise.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expe­ditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Books by Andrea Wulf

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expeditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expeditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.

Historian Andrea Wulf’s Chasing Venus is beautifully paced, alternating between expeditions, with lush descriptions of the often arduous journeys involved.