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Riverhead Hardcover
January 2009
On Sale: December 26, 2008
272 pages
ISBN: 1594488525
EAN: 9781594488528
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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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