Book Review: The Discovery of Nature by Hans Mulder

 

Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads De ontdekking van de natuur.

Fun fact: I recently read another Dutch book on this subject (well, roughly the same subject) with the exact same title, except it was by Jan Luiten van Zanden and several other authors. What a co-incidence!

Ah well, let's have a look!

In this large book, the author takes a look at various aspects of natural history and the titular "discovery of nature". It covers several topics of natural history research, such as the existence of mythical creatures which were thought to be real in medieval times, Van Leeuwenhoek discovering bacteria, the beloved birds of paradise being the hot item in Europe where they were richly displayed (without wings or legs, leading to the theory they could just hover through the air), the earliest menageries in the Netherlands, several old wildlife illustrators, and of course some of Darwin's discoveries.

Overall a really good book. It's large, the text is accessible without too much jargon and has a lot of substance to it, and it's filled to the brim with illustrations to add further context. It covers a wide array of subjects, rather than being one direct timeline of natural history discoveries, but honestly this made it all the more fun and engaging for me because you never quite knew what topic would come next. Still, the chapters were all written in a very engaging way and never really got boring for me, even if there is some overlap between some of them. 

The illustrations also add another really neat dimension to everything, helping to show how people back then thought about certain animals and portrayed them. Things weren't quite back then what they are now, leading to some interesting depictions of certain animals. The book is also large and filled to the brim with illustrations and photos. 

Overall a really neat book, I really don't have any complaints here. It had me interested from start to finish and I'm super glad I picked it up from the library. A definite recommendation.

Rating: 5/5