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.
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