Dephlogisticated Air

For Salon Andrew O’Hehir reviews Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air.

Although Johnson does his best to view the rest of Priestley’s life and career through an optimistic prism, other authors might indeed paint it more sardonically. After making a discovery so big no living person could understand it, he was first driven out of England by monarchist, Anglican thugs (as amusing as that concept may sound today) and then demonized as a French spy and nearly deported from the United States under the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts signed by his former friend John Adams.