Books like Invention of air by Steven Johnson

Simon Singh traces the sweeping history of cryptography, from Mary Queen of Scots to Navajo Code Talkers and the Internet’s secure commerce, revealing how secrecy has shaped wars, nations, and technology.

Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography chronicles his rise from a self‑taught youth to a celebrated printer, inventor, diplomat, and statesman, offering insight into his life and the early United States.

Walter Isaacson chronicles the minds that forged the digital age, from Ada Lovelace to Larry Page, showing how vision, collaboration, and engineering transformed abstract ideas into the computers, Internet, and technology we use today.

Jim Simons transformed Wall Street with Renaissance Technologies’ algorithmic Medallion Fund, delivering 66% annual returns and over $100 B in profits, while his quantitative approach reshaped finance and intersected with U.S. and European politics.

Simon Winchester chronicles the life of Cambridge biochemist Joseph Needham, whose passion for China led him to uncover the empire's pioneering inventions—from printing to the compass—and to author the monumental *Science and Civilisation in China* series.

Charles Nicholl paints an intimate portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, drawing on manuscripts, notebooks and contemporary witnesses to reveal the artist’s mind, his works, and his circle.

J. Craig Venter’s trail‑blazing journey—from Vietnam medic to pioneer of the human genome—reveals how his daring rereading of DNA reshaped science and sparked one of the era’s most fierce controversies.

A compelling look at the rise and fall of the Fox sisters and the birth of Spiritualism in America, blending historical narrative with supernatural elements.

Fritjof Capra uncovers Leonardo da Vinci as an early architect of the scientific method, using over 6,000 notebook pages to show his pioneering work in anatomy, optics, hydraulics, and mechanical engineering, revealing a holistic, ecological worldview.

At a time when the Manhattan Project was synonymous with large-scale science, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–67) represented the new sociocultural power of the American intellectual. Catapulted to fame as director of the Los Alamos atomic weapons laboratory, Oppenheimer occupied a key position in the compact between science and the state that developed out of World War II. By tracing the making—and unmaking—of Oppenheimer’s wartime and postwar scientific identity, Charles Thorpe illustrates the struggles over the role of the scientist in relation to nuclear weapons, the state, and culture.A stylish intellectual biography, Oppenheimer maps out changes in the roles of scientists and intellectuals in twentieth-century America, ultimately revealing transformations in Oppenheimer’s persona that coincided with changing attitudes toward science in society."This is an outstandingly well-researched book, a pleasure to read and distinguished by the high quality of its observations and judgments. It will be of special interest to scholars of modern history, but non-specialist readers will enjoy the clarity that Thorpe brings to common misunderstandings about his subject."—Graham Farmelo, Times Higher Education Supplement"A fascinating new perspective....Thorpe’s book provides the best perspective yet for understanding Oppenheimer’s Los Alamos years, which were critical, after all, not only to his life but, for better or worse, the history of mankind."—Catherine Westfall, Nature