The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson.
A retelling of the well-trod story of Joseph Priestly. One of the interesting footnotes to history is that in their long correspondence John Adams and Thomas Jefferson mentioned Alexander Hamilton three times and Priestly fifty-some times. He was chased out of England for his Unitarian ideas, and landed in the U.S. when we were accepting of such things. Now I suspect he would be treated to the opposite way.
But for newbies to the history of science, it's a good book, including the dreary details of how Ben Franklin mapped the Gulf Stream. It was all about postal delivery.