Common as Air Revolution, Art, and Ownership [Paperback]

Common as Airoffers a stirring defense of our cultural commons, that vast store of art and ideas we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. Suspicious of the current idea that all creative work is intellectual property, Lewis Hyde turns to America's Founding Fathersmen such as Adams, Madison, and Jeffersonin search of other ways to imagine the fruits of human wit and imagination. What he discovers is a rich tradition in which knowledge was assumed to be a commonwealth, not a private preserve.

For the founders, democratic self-governance itself demanded open and easy access to ideas. So did the growth of creative communities such as that of eighteenth-century science. And so did the flourishing of public persons, the very actors whose civic virtue brought the nation into being.

In this lively, carefully argued, and well-documented book, Hyde brings the past to bear on present matters, shedding fresh light on everything from the Human Genome Project to Bob Dylan's musical roots.Common as Airallows us to stand on the shoulders of America's revolutionary giants and thus to see beyond today's narrow debates over cultural ownership. What it reveals is nothing less than a vision of how to reclaim the commonwealth of art and ideas that we were meant to inherit.

Lewis Hydeis the author ofThe Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of PropertyandTrickster Makes This World(FSG, 1998). A MacArthur Fellow and former director of creative writing at Harvard, he is currently Luce Professor of Art and Politics at Kenyon College.

Lewis Hyde has written a stunning book. Drawing from science, law, and art, and looking deep into the intentions of the founding fathers,Common as Airis essential reading, no matter where you stand in the ongoing debate about the ownership of art and ideas. Anna Deavere Smith

Lewis Hyde's Common As Air [is] an eloquent and erudite plea for prl.