The Invention of Air
By Steven Johnson
(Riverhead Hardcover, Hardcover, 9781594488528, 272pp.)
Publication Date: January 2009
Other Editions of This Title: eBook, Paperback (September 2009), Compact Disc (January 2009)
Categories: History
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Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts--in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion--the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America's Founding Fathers.
The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change that provokes us to recast our understanding of the Founding Fathers.
It is the story of Joseph Priestley--scientist and theologian, protégé of Benjamin Franklin, friend of Thomas Jefferson--an eighteenth-century radical thinker who played pivotal roles in the invention of ecosystem science, the discovery of oxygen, the founding of the Unitarian Church, and the intellectual development of the United States. And it is a story that only Steven Johnson, acclaimed juggler of disciplines and provocative ideas, can do justice to.
In the 178 0s, Priestley had established himself in his native England as a brilliant scientist, a prominent minister, and an outspoken advocate of the American Revolution, who had sustained long correspondences with Franklin, Jefferson, and John Adams. Ultimately, his radicalism made his life politically uncomfortable, and he fled to the nascent United States. Here, he was able to build conceptual bridges linking the scientific, political, and religious impulses that governed his life. And through his close relationships with the Founding Fathers--Jefferson credited Priestley as the man who prevented him from abandoning Christianity--he exerted profound if little-known influence on the shape and course of our history.
As in his last bestselling work, The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson here uses a dramatic historical story to explore themes that have long engaged him: innovation and the way new ideas emerge and spread, and the environments that foster these breakthroughs. And as he did in Everything Bad Is Good for You, Johnson upsets some fundamental assumptions about the world we live in--namely, what it means when we invoke the Founding Fathers--and replaces them with a clear-eyed, eloquent assessment of where we stand today.
Steven Johnson is the author of the national bestsellers The Ghost Map, Everything Bad Is Good for You, and Mind Wide Open, as well as Emergence and Interface Culture. He was the cofounder of the online magazine FEED and is a contributing editor to Wired.
?[Johnson is] an infectiously exciting writer [and] The Invention of Air is delightful to read. But it aims high. It isn't a work of conventional history or biography, though it contains snippets of both, but more like a case study in the history of ideas that hints at a grander analytical theory. Johnson is a wide-ranging enthusiast with a catholic appetite for intriguing facts and a Marxian appetite for searching for structures that underlie social phenomena.?
?Salon
?Like Priestley, Johnson?who wrote the bestselling Everything Bad Is Good For You?is a polymath, and ? [it?s] exhilarating to follow his unpredictable trains of thought. To explain why some ideas upend the world, he draws upon many disciplines: chemistry, social history, geography, even ecosystem science.?
?Los Angeles Times
?Steven Johnson?s mind works in wondrous ways and readers have been the beneficiaries of his eclectic interests. Johnson?s new book, The Invention of Air, marks a return to cultural history ?His free-ranging mind and irreverent wit entertain and prompt thought.?
?Seattle Post-Intelligencer
?Steven Johnson argues that [this] key player has been all but forgotten ? An expat, a champion of reason, an original progressive?Priestley?s ideals were central to the American experiment. He rarely gets the credit, but he was arguably the United States? original advocate for hope and change.?
? Newsweek
?This is not a book about the discovery of oxygen but about the invention of air: how groups of scientists, natural philosophers, religious leaders and politicians served as cultural petri dishes in which ideas were discussed, experimented with, discarded or accepted ?[Johnson] gives long-overdue time and space to some of the more controversial aspects of [Priestley?s] work ?Priestley may not have gotten full credit for his work on oxygen, but this new book gives plenty to the life of the man himself.?
?Dallas Morning News
?Steven Johnson's latest book, The Invention of Air, is a wide-ranging, learned, engrossing biography of the polymath pioneering scientist, Joseph Priestley ? Johnson uses the life of Priestley to illuminate a theory of history that holds that great people are neither an inevitable product of their times, nor luminous, supernatural geniuses -- rather, they are the product of an ecosystem of influences, technologies, climate, and energy (literally -- the story of stored energy in coal, saltpetre, and plant-bound carbon are vital to the story). He pulls this off deftly, with a series of insightful, beautifully realized anaecdotes from the life of Priestley and his contemporaries -- his allies and his many enemies -- that make the idea of history being shaped by webs and networks seem absolutely true.?
? Boingboing
?[Johnson] refracts just about every beam of Enlightenment thought through the prism of Priestley.?
?Seattle Weekly
?We rarely hear of [Joseph Priestley] today, but it wasn't always thus: the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams includes 52 mentions of Priestley, versus just three of George Washington. With The Invention of Air, Steven Johnson brilliantly explains why ? For all of Priestley?s many achievements, laid out so delightfully in Johnson?s account, it?s his work with plants and the oxygen cycle that rightfully gained him immortality ? Engrossing.?
?Oregonian
?In The Invention of Air Steven Johnson gives a biography not just of a man, but a time in which the spigot of ideas was gradually being cranked wide open. It's a fun (and quite short) read for anyone interested in the intersection of science, politics, and religion. It's also an interesting look at how societies react -- for good and ill -- to periods of rapid change.?
?Daily Kos
?A breath of fresh air ? Johnson paints Priestley not as a man of the past but precisely the sort of figure the world needs more than ever: A searcher who shared his discoveries openly and willingly, crossed disciplinary boundaries with impunity and insight, who conceived of the world as a large laboratory ? We live in troubling times, filled with signs of a great economic apocalypse, politicized science on topics from birth control to climate change and religious zealots who kill innocents rather than live peacefully with them. This is exactly the moment to learn from Priestley, who survived riots, threats of prosecution and other hardships and yet never doubted that ?the world was headed naturally toward and increase in liberty and understanding.??
?New York Post
?Intelligent ? Steven Johnson, who has a fine reputation for discerning trends and for his iconoclastic appreciation of popular culture, chooses his topics well. As a reminder of the underlying sanity and common sense of this country?a reminder perhaps much needed after the excesses of a displeasing presidential election campaign
?The Invention of Air succeeds like a shot of the purest oxygen.?
? Publishers Weekly (Signature Review)
?Arresting account of the career of Joseph Priestley ? Johnson employs his customary digressiveness to great effect ? Another rich, readable examination of the intersections where culture and science meet from a scrupulous historian who never offers easy answer to troubling, perhaps intractable questions.?
?Kirkus
?Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) was a veritable Renaissance man, whose interests and skills ranged from science to religion to politics. Science writer Johnson (The Ghost Map) weaves together all of these themes and how they played out in his life, in early America, and among the Founding Fathers. He tells the story [of Priestley] in a reader-friendly manner that also encourages readers to think about how these themes apply in today?s world.?
?Library Journal
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