"I have the crazy idea to represent in one work the entire material universe, everything we know today of the phenomena in the celestial spaces and of life on earth, from the stars in the nebulae to the geography of mosses and gigantic rocks, in a vivid language that will stimulate the imagination."--from Humboldt's 1834 letter to Karl Varnhagen The first volume of Cosmos, Alexander von Humboldt's five-volume description of...