A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen"The discovery of oxygen in the late 1700s changed human thought and history as radically as Copernicus's astronomy, Newton's apple, Darwin's chimps, and Einstein's formulas. Its isolation changed the status of humans on earth in ways never before imagined, giving us enormous control over our environment, and a destructive capability that was previously the gods' alone. Yet its discovery began quietly, with the survival of a mouse under a laboratory bell jar." "Joe Jackson's marvelous re-creation of these events takes us back to an age when revolt and revelation were in the air - the final decades of the 1700s and the waning days of the Enlightenment. Where it had recently seemed that reason and science had the power to build a better world, political crises and seismic intellectual shifts were overwhelming the age of reason. Set against the conflagrations of the American Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, and the Reign of Terror, A World on Fire deftly weaves together biography and history, scientific passion and political will, in presenting the story of two brilliant men and their truly revolutionary breakthrough."--BOOK JACKET. |
Contents
God in the Air | 1 |
PROBLEM | 17 |
The ClothDressers Son | 19 |
The Sums and Receipts of Parallel Worlds | 35 |
The Gas in the Beer | 57 |
The Goodness of Air | 99 |
The Problem of Burning | 128 |
SOLUTION | 141 |
The Mouse in the Jar | 163 |
The Twelve Days | 175 |
The Language of War | 188 |
King Mob | 227 |
The World Out of Joint | 261 |
The Burning World | 327 |
Chronology | 347 |
Copyright | |
The Sentimental Journey | 143 |
Other editions - View all
A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen Joe Jackson Limited preview - 2007 |
A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen Joe Jackson Limited preview - 2007 |
A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen Joe Jackson Limited preview - 2007 |