The dauntless Andrea Wulf has gone adventuring, and returned with this enthralling account of young, nomadic George Forster. Her superb narrative shimmers with scholarly detail and magnificently sustains the breathless exhilaration of his journeys, his extraordinarily liberal and observant mind and the intense emotional drama of his life. A combination of panoramic travelogue and tender psychological study animated at every point by Wulfs own travels and research, The Traveller is hypnotically successful and wonderfully restores George Forster as a major historical figure of early European Romanticism -- Richard Holmes As George Forster circumnavigates the globe, Wulf circumnavigates the Enlightenment mind in all its complexity, making for a doubly brilliant and breathtaking adventure -- Sue Prideaux Unfailingly and inspiringly humane, George Forster is the overlooked tragic hero of the European Enlightenment. With her characteristic combination of scholarship and empathy, Andrea Wulf conjures the global range of his curiosity, and the poignant wilderness of his family life. This book is the memorial that he has long deserved -- Neil MacGregor A remarkable biography of a remarkable man. Wulfs books are always horizon-expanding, but with this one she has excelled herself. I loved it -- Tom Holland Andrea Wulf belongs to the small, splendid canon of writers unafraid to render fact with feeling. The Traveller is a work of devotion and rigor celebrating a man's courage to look past the horizon of his era's assumptions -- Maria Popova Award-winning historian Wulf draws on abundant archival sources to create a meticulously researched life of George Forster (1754-94)Polish-born naturalist, ethnographer, explorer, and German revolutionary ... Wulf amply restores his stature as a brilliant mind ... A stirring, empathetic portrait -- Kirkus Reviews Transfixing ... Through extensive research, adept synthesis, empathy, and artistry, Wulf fully inhabits Forsters life ... Readers will be deeply moved by Wulf's spirited honoring of this perpetual outsider and galvanizing writer, original thinker and a man of enormous compassion * Booklist *