The Invention of Air

The Invention of Air

He was the “Salman Rushdie of Georgian England,” a world-famous intellectual with “a bulls-eye on his back,” writes bestselling author Steven Johnson about the famous British scientist, theologian and political theorist Joseph Priestley. Fleeing from England to America in 1794 at age 61, Priestley inaugurated “one of the most honorable traditions of the American experience,” becoming the first great scientist-exile. (Teller and Einstein would follow in his footsteps.) Yet Priestley’s dramatic biography is only half the story of The Invention of Air, where how the story is told is as interesting as the story itself.

Johnson begins with Priestley’s career as a scientist in England, from the early encouragement he received from Ben Franklin to his discovery of oxygen and his invention of soda water. Priestly was also an ordained minister who helped found Unitarianism, and a famous 1785 sermon in which he claimed that he and the other dissenters were “laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition” came to be known as the “gunpowder sermon” and gave him the nickname “gunpowder Joe.” Eventually Priestley’s subversive religious ideas and radical politics—including his support for the French Revolution—provoked an angry mob of “Church and King” protesters to burn his laboratory and home. So Priestly fled to America, where he bonded with two of our Founding Fathers. Priestly formed relationships with both John Adams (who compared him to Socrates) and Thomas Jefferson, ultimately siding with Jefferson’s Republicans against Adams’ Federalists. And Priestley’s posthumously published letters from Jefferson ended up fueling the legendary 14-year correspondence between the retired pair of our 2nd and 3rd presidents.

But as Johnson tells the story of Priestley’s influence on early America, he also deftly juggles disciplines in his signature digressions, ranging from an assessment of how coffeehouse culture fueled the enlightenment to an examination of Priestley’s eight-year “hot streak” of scientific achievement beginning in 1767, seen in the light not only of Hegelian theories of intellectual progress, but of winning streaks in modern professional sports.

Ultimately, Johnson’s multidisciplinary approach resonates nicely with the wide spectrum of interests and achievements of both Priestley and our Founding Fathers, and perfectly suits the books overarching theme, that “vital fields of intellectual achievement cannot be cordoned off from one another and relegated to the specialists.” The result is a funhouse ride of ideas with a serious moral about the primacy of reason in science, religion and politics that Johnson hopes might inspire generations of thinkers and politician to come.

"The Invention of Air succeeds like a shot of the purest oxygen."—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

“Steven Johnson's delightful new book shows how the brilliant Joseph Priestley's science and politics and wondrous curiosity were all woven together to create one of the most fascinating personalities of his era. We can see why he was so beloved by his friend and mentor Benjamin Franklin, for they shared so many passions.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“Steven Johnson gives us a new American hero, Joseph Priestley, who was not even American—or was he super-American? Johnson convinces that he belongs in our pantheon.” —Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettsyburg

Hardcover: 272 pages

Publisher: Riverhead ( January 01, 2009 )

Item #: 76-6524

ISBN: 9781594488528

Product Dimensions: 6.0 x 9.0 x 0.64 inches

Product Weight: 13.0 ounces