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Average Rating:  out of 7 Reviews
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Price: $25.95
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Sale: $15.43
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Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover
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EAN (European Article Number): 9781594488528
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Steven Johnson
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Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
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Dewey Decimal Number: 540.92
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Publication Date: 2008-12-26
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Reading Level: 272
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Description: 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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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Interesting but should only be used with caution |
Date: 2009-01-08 |
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Details: I enjoyed this book even while I quickly came to distrust it. Although it wasn't one of my areas of specialization, I did some work on the history of science while in grad school and I even had a job transcribing the lectures of a prominent philosopher of the history of science. To supplement this I read a number of key books focusing on the history of the discipline.
The problem I have with this book is that it is misleading. To steal a phrase of Somerset Maugham (writing about himself), Joseph Priestley is a good scientist of the second rank. In virtually every account of the history of science or intellectual history he is regarded as a talented dilettante, a gifted amateur. He certainly played a role in the history of science, performing experiments that more important thinkers were able to utilize to further science, but Priestley himself frequently failed -- and Johnson does hint at this without emphasizing its significance -- to understand the full implications of the results of his experiments. He was extremely weak as a theoretician, which is why he is not accounted among the great scientists.
Why is this misleading? Well, historians of science do not regard Priestley as a key or even especially important figure. At no point does Johnson hint that this is the widespread assessment of Priestley's place. It is a tad misleading to state that his contemporaries had one opinion without proceeding to remark that their successors do not share that opinion. Johnson talks of Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley as the two leading chemists, but it is intensely deceptive to talk as if they were competitors for pride of place. Lavoisier is one of the great geniuses in the history of science. In fact, modern chemistry is usually credited with beginning with him.
Another example. Any credible account of the history of the theory of ecosystems is not going to begin or even include Joseph Priestley, but Johnson implies that the science began with him. This is a preposterous stretch.
In other words, the book is simply not reliable. It doesn't attempt to disclose the general opinion of Priestley's place in history by philosophers and historians of science. By leaving this all unsaid, he implies that Priestley was a much more important than in fact he was.
All of this is a tremendous disservice to Priestley, who while not a genius and not a scientist or thinker of the first rank, was unquestionably an immensely interesting and fascinating figure. The problem with the book is that it wants to go beyond this to portray Priestley as something that he was not. He definitely played a role in the growth of science. But he was not an Antoine Lavoisier.
Still, if one grasps this fundamental weakness in the book, it can be a fun and interesting lead. Much like another Englishman whose interests ran in all imaginable directions, the Rev. George Berkeley (who had a town adjacent to San Francisco named after him), he is an immensely likable individual. One is impressed by his passionate quest for knowledge, his generosity of spirit, his progressive attitudes, and his great goodheartedness. I'm not quite sure why Joseph Priestley as he actually was seemed inadequate to Johnson; I'm not sure why such a fundamentally sympathetic figure needed to be elevated to a pivotal figure in the history of science.
So I'm in a dilemma about this book. It is a fun and interesting read. And it does a good job of explaining why we should care about Joseph Priestley. Yet he outrageously exaggerates his place in thought. I had other problems with the book (some of his metaphors are stretched to the extreme), but this was the major one. It reminds me of various rock historians who try to make us believe that the Doors and Jim Morrison were the equal of the Beatles, the Who, and the Rolling Stones, whereas in fact they didn't even come up to the level of the Kinks.
I do completely agree with Johnson about one thing. The incredible narrowness of most supposedly educated people today is appalling. Johnson begins the book by quoting a former undergraduate classmate of mine, Mike Huckabee (who even in the couple of theology classes we had together at Ouachita Baptist University did not especially distinguished himself), who when running for president disdained the knowledge of science (actually, he was trying to avoid stating that he denied the validity of science). Modern science actually began among Christians who believed that the universe, as the creation of a rational God, had a logical, rational structure that his creatures, created in his image, could understand. Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes, for instance, were deeply religious and practicing Christians (Newton wrote far more on Christian prophecy, for instance, than he did on physics, while Descartes' entire project was to create a view of the world compatible with the Christian Platonism of Augustine rather than the Aristotelianism of Thomas) Aquinas. Both would have found Huckabee's irrationalism un-Christian. No doubt one of Huckabee's motives was to avoid alienating minimally educated individuals who would have found his no-nothingism grounds for disqualification in a presidential candidate. But it is also quite true that far too many people today do not strive to comprehend the world around them. I find Joseph Priestley's passion for knowledge to be both admirable and inspirational. But it doesn't elevate him to the level of the top rungs of science. He was not a Lavoisier. He was several rungs below a James Clerk Maxwell. And frankly I believe one of the disservices of the book was to make Priestley take on a role that does not befit him. As I said earlier, he was a good scientist of the second rank. He was, however, an absolutely outstanding human being. |
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Review Summary: Interesting and short |
Date: 2009-01-07 |
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Details: "The Invention of Air" is a short book. If you bought this for an in-flight read on a cross-country flight, you'll be reaching for the airline magazine by the time you get to Iowa and crossing your fingers for a decent movie. But short is good in the history genre. Too many history books get bogged down in minutiae to the detriment of the reader's ability to finish the narrative. "The Invention of Air" keeps moving through Priestley's eventful life, and is written in a compelling manner that makes you want to keep reading and not put it down. For example, I had no idea of Priestley's contributions to Enlightenment culture or the influence of his friendships with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. I was also very interested in the experiments that Priestly did to discover the nature of air. Johnson does a good job in describing what they were and what they proved.
On the downside, this book is so short, and tries to cover so much area, that it comes across as superficial at times. Further, the author makes some interesting, but barely-supported, assertions that fall flat. Franklin would have liked to have finished out his life in London but for the Revolution? Really? Maybe this speculation is true, but in a book about Priestly, it's as out of place as it is unsupported. And Johnson attempts to shoehorn too much of Priestly's life into his own historical paradigm, in a clunky manner.
Nevertheless, readers interested in science and in Revolutionary-era history will enjoy this book. It's at least worth checking out from the library. |
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Review Summary: A good book and worth the read, but tries to cover too much in too short a space |
Date: 2009-01-05 |
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Details: The Invention of Air is a well-written and interesting tale about a pivotal time in world history and science. Johnson uses the life of Joseph Priestly and his contribution to science, journalism, political thought and history as the focal point for this story. The story is well told and brings together multiple seemingly unconnected points into a coherent chain of events. I have not read Johnson's other books so I cannot comment on this book in relationship to the others. However, I think that this book attempts to be a cross between James Burke's Connections and a light biography.
Books modeled after Connections present a litany of discoveries that build upon one another to create something that we would not imagine before. That is part of this book as we move from the geology of Northern English Coal fields to industrialization and the development of liberal democracy. In this regard, most of the book, and the first third in particular, read more like a college history thesis or long paper, than a work intended for popular fiction.
If Johnson's idea for the book was to `rehabilitate' Priestly and his position in the Enlightenment, the Revolution and the Early American Republic, then he does not provide enough evidence, or an argument to achieve this, in my opinion. For a book that purports to be about the story of science, faith, revolution and the birth of America, the treatment of these issues is surprisingly light. This is ok as the book works, but if you are looking to understand the intricacies of how these forces came together, then there are other places to achieve this.
This is not a biography of Priestly. Most of the connections that Johnson makes are described in passing and do not provide much weight to his arguments. For example, Johnson repeatedly points out that Priestly knew and corresponded with people like Franklin, Adams, Jefferson etc. He then makes the leap that Priestly was an integral part of the birth of America. While Johnson does provide some excerpts from letters, he does not describe the world and how it would be different if Priestley's influence was not there. For an example of how this is done well is Descartes Bones.
Priestly must have been an extraordinary man given his discovery of oxygen, theological contributions, and political role, unfortunately the book does not really allow you to see the man as much of Johnson's words are focused on advancing ideas related to historical development rather than understanding the man, his motivations, etc. In that regard, Johnson uses Priestly as a device to describe and integrate arguments rather than a human being. This is a weakness as the book is short - about 200 pages or so - and had the room for a biographical treatment.
The Invention of Air is a book that tries to span many genres moving from historical biography, to evolutionary history, to science, to policy and political rehabilitation. In this regard it tries to do too much. Don't get me wrong, it's a good book and one that I am glad to have read, but I feel that it has not done justice to the man, the times, or the pivotal moments that it covers in Anglo Saxon history. |
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Review Summary: Ideas, Science and Revolution |
Date: 2009-01-03 |
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Details: Joseph Priestly was a minister, politician and scientist who hung out with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Impressive friends. He discovered oxygen, figured out the role plants play in the great scheme of things, wrote the definitive book on electricity, which was the standard textbook for the next hundred years and he also invented club soda, but failed to patent it, leaving it for a guy named Schweppe to do a decade or so later. As a scientist he was brilliant, even if he did hang onto the belief of phlogiston, a supposedly mysterious substance that was the part of matter that burned, long after everybody else in the scientific world had turned to the idea of oxidation.
Priestly also had enemies and lots of them. Probably because as an Englishman living in England he publicly supported some unpopular causes, like both the American and French revolutions. He was literally run out of London by a mob, eventually winding up in America, where he championed civil liberties and continued his correspondence with Franklin, Jefferson and other notables.
This biography, which is so well written it reads like a novel, does not have a dry word in it. Mr. Johnson knows his subject and he knows how to make him live and breathe. I'm ashamed to say that other than hearing his name back in a college chemistry glass a time or two that I didn't have a clue as to who he was, what he'd done or why he was important historically. I do now. Mr. Johnson has written a delicious books about ideas, science and revolution, a book every freethinker should read. |
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Review Summary: A Thinking Man Called Gunpowder Joe |
Date: 2009-01-02 |
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Details: Joseph Priestly's discovery of Oxygen and the fact that the Earth's air is made up of different gasses was as revolutionary as the American and French Revolutions, two causes he supported. He was a minister and a man of ideas when he first wandered into the London Coffee House, where a group who called themselves the "Honest Whigs" met and gabbed. One famous member of the group was Ben Franklin who would become a lifelong friend of Priestly's.
It was while drinking coffee with these men that Priestly grew interested in Science, but he also held deep beliefs in civil liberties, religion and a host of other subjects, some very unpopular. For example he didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. And it was his unpopular support of those two revolutions that earned him the nickname Gunpowder Joe.
Priestly left London for Birmingham where he formed a friendship with a group of thinkers who met every month on the full moon. These were the Lunar Men and they called themselves Lunaticks and they financed Priestly's scientific experiments.
Priestly eventually left England for America and Pennsylvania, where he continued his lifelong support of civil liberties. He corresponded often with Thomas Jefferson and disagreed with President Adams over his Alien and Sedition's Act. Priestly was a major thinker of his day and made an indelible stamp on American History, Science and Religion and this book makes the man and his times come to life.
Mr. Johnson has turned out a very readable book, one that took me three long nights to get through. I am a fast reader, but I found myself stopping several times during the narrative to think. Imagine that, sitting and thinking. It's been over two centuries since Gunpowder Joe breathed the air he defined, since those days when thinking and discussing things thought about were so important. I wonder what he'd make of the twenty-four hour news cycle, cable news, spin and spin doctors. It seems there's not much room for thought anymore. Who has the time? Maybe we should make some.
Reviewed by Captain Katie Osborne |
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