all i want for Christmas is: 'The Invention of Air'

read Boing Boing's write-up of it here.

"Johnson uses the life of [Joseph] Priestly 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 (literally -- the story of stored energy in coal, saltpetre, and plant-bound carbon are vital to the story). He pulls this off deftly, with a series of insightful, beautifully realized anaecdotes from the life of Priestly and his contemporaries -- his allies and his many enemies -- that make the idea of history being shaped by webs and networks seem absolutely true."

Fascinating!