How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Groundbreaking Reads: Ideas That Shook the World is the theme of the adult summer reading program at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. Our intent is to inspire readers by emphasizing innovations that led to literary, scientific, political, and cultural developments. In some cases, books themselves are groundbreaking. We feature many of these books on our suggested reading lists, but we also highlight books that tell the story of progress. Such a book is How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson.

Johnson's book was bestseller in 2014 and the companion to his highly-entertaining six-part PBS series. In both the book and the televised series, Johnson tells the stories of these concepts:

• Clean
• Time
• Glass
• Light
• Cold
• Sound

My favorite chapter may be Cold. Johnson shows how someone's idea of cutting ice from frozen ponds to store until summer led to shipping it to the tropics. Once that started someone else perfected insulating the hold for the ice and another on making artificial cold by heat removal, both of which led to refrigerators. The idea of chilling food led to cooling spaces with air conditioning (or the other way around). Air conditioning led to people being able to live more comfortably in tropical and desert regions, starting a migration to states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. All because someone cut ice from ponds.

Being about technology, it is appropriate that How We Got to Now is available in many formats. All facilitate optimism and love of innovation.

Johnson, Steven. How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. Riverhead Books, 2014. 293p. ISBN 9781594632969.

Audiobook: Penguin Audio, 2014. 5 discs. ISBN 9781611763386

DVD: PBS, 2014. 2 discs. ISBN 9781627890366