The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson - A cure for miopia.

From the author of The Ghost Map and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new national bestseller: the exhilarating( Los Angeles Times) story of a founding father long forgotten.(Newsweek)

National bestselling author Steven Johnson tells the fascinating 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. As he did so masterfully in The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson 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.

A cure for miopia.
I had never heard of Joseph Priestly before reading (actually listening to) this book. I enjoyed it thoroughly, learning not only about the man himself, but about the history of the atmosphere and of terrestrial plants, the Renaissance genius of Ben Franklin, Unitarianism, why beer can be a danger to mice, and what John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote to one another about after they retired, along the way. Johnson does a good job of moving from foreground to background, from science to politics to the personal, keeping "what was known then" and "what we know now" in creative balance.

Some reviewers criticize Johnson in odd ways. One person says he makes too much of Priestley as a scientist, though in fact he describes those limitations quite well. Another reviewer, by contrast, complains that Johnson unfairly describes Priestley as a "sloppy dabbler" -- in fact Johnson also sheds light (in an enlightening discussion) on the merits of Priestley's methodology. As Johnson rightly argues, different styles of scholarship can be useful under different circumstances -- surely this is true in modern scholarship as well. Another person complains too little attention was paid to his science.

One can't be all things to all people, apparently. But one should gather from the book's subtitle that it is not meant to focus narrowly on just one aspect of who Priestley was. It may be that Johnson misread the history of Unitarian thought. All in all, though, if you don't mind looking at an ecclectic ecclectically, and can see more than one thread in a coat of many colors, this is a very satisfying and enjoyable act of biography.

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