Rosenzweig was fascinating, of course, but it was his discovery, or invention—no one knew quite how to categorize it—that was truly the “newsmaker of the year.” The humble man called himself a botanist, but he was in truth a chemical engineer who had concocted a synthetic fertilizer that caused the desert sands of Israel to bloom like a greenhouse.
In this paragraph, we learn that this character is fascinating AND humble — two characteristics I could never have gleamed from dialogue or actions.
