Originally reviewed Jan. 28, 2009
“The Case for the Generalist” would be my title for the book. There are themes in this book that will stick with me for a long, long time. Steven Berlin Johnson is the father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of five books, “The Invention of Air” being the most recent . . . and I really like it. I’ve been talking about it to anyone who will listen, every day for days. Not that I had much of a choice, when you write a book making a case for the generalist, toss in a rogue hero challenging church & political institutions – with a dash of optimism - count me in.
The book takes a look at enlightenment era and the birth of america, centered around a lesser-known albeit extremely influential character named Joseph Priestly, all through the lens of ecosystems science. I should add this disclaimer: I did not read this book, I listened to it while driving, which is how most of my “reading” has been accomplished lately. Several portions were exciting enough to hit rewind and listen over. This should only be done at red lights.
I don’t have time to go into detail about everything I’ve learned, so you’ll have to buy me a coffee and ask me about it. For me, it falls into the “must read” category, it has been life changing, and at the very least worth looking a little further into the ideas behind the book by checking out these rabbit trails:
View short video clips of some of Steven’s material on YouTube here.
Related topic, different author, but still worth the trip: “The Top 5 Reasons to be a Jack-of-All Trades” by Timothy Ferriss.
From Publishers Weekly
SignatureReviewed by Simon Winchester:
This is an intelligent retelling of a rather well-known story, that of Joseph Priestley, the Yorkshire dissenting theologian and chemist, and then went on to emigrate to America and advised the creators of the new republic—Thomas Jefferson, most notably—on how best to run their country. Steven Johnson, who has a fine reputation for discerning trends and for his iconoclastic appreciation of popular culture, chooses his topics well. His most recent book, The Ghost Map, looked at the story—also very familiar—of the London cholera epidemic of 1854, and of the heroic epidemiologist, John Snow, who discovered the ailment’s origins and path of transmission. It was a good story, but essentially a simple one. With Priestley, Johnson has now taken on a subject that is every bit as complex and multifaceted as any of the Quentin Tarantino films he so admires. Priestley was a scientist, true, and his meditations on the exhalations of gases from mint leaves and the curiosities of phlogiston and fixed air, his discoveries of sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, ammonia gas—and oxygen, most importantly—and his relationship with his French rival Lavoisier have been the stuff of schoolroom chemistry lessons for more than two centuries. But it is his politically liberal and spiritually dissenting views that underpin the story that Johnson chooses to tell—views that led in 1794 to Priestley, whose house in Birmingham had been sacked by rioters, emigrating to America, thereby becoming the first great scientist-exile, seeking safe harbour in America after being persecuted for his religious and political beliefs at home. Albert Einstein, Otto Frisch, Edward Teller, Xiao Qiang—they would all follow in Priestley’s footsteps. Johnson unearths an interesting and illuminating statistic: in the 165 letters that passed between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the name Benjamin Franklin is mentioned five times, George Washington three times, Alexander Hamilton twice—and Joseph Priestley, a foreign immigrant, is cited no fewer than 52 times. The influence of the man—he was a fervent supporter of the French Revolution, a tolerant stoic and a rationalist utterly opposed to religious fundamentalism—was quite astonishing, and Steven Johnson makes a brave and generally successful attempt to summarize and parse the degree to which this influence infected the founding principles of the American nation. As a reminder of the underlying sanity and common sense of this country—a reminder perhaps much needed after the excesses of a displeasing presidential election campaign—The Invention of Air succeeds like a shot of the purest oxygen. Illus. (Jan. 2)Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman, is working on a biography of the Atlantic Ocean.
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