Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air" -- how an eclectic minister/scientist/politician shows that history is a web - Boing Boing

Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air" -- how an eclectic minister/scientist/politician shows that history is a web

Johnson uses the life of Priestley to illuminate a theory of history that holds that great people are neither an inevitable product of their times, nor luminous, supernatural geniuses -- rather, they are the product of an ecosystem of influences, technologies, climate, and energy