The Invention of Air

Johnson uses the life of Joseph Priestley — chemist, theologian, political radical, friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson — to argue that the history of ideas cannot be told through isolated genius. Priestley discovered oxygen, helped found Unitarianism, was driven out of England by a mob that burned his laboratory, and ended his life in rural Pennsylvania still corresponding with the American founders. Johnson reads this biography through the lens of ecosystems: Priestley's breakthroughs depended on coffeehouses, correspondence networks, the Lunar Society, and the particular energy infrastructure of eighteenth-century England. The book is a compact demonstration of Johnson's method — take a single life and use it to reveal the invisible networks that make innovation possible. It connects science, politics, and energy in ways that feel surprisingly relevant to contemporary debates about infrastructure and knowledge production.