Johnson was born and raised in Ithaca, New York.^[2] She attended Yale University for her Bachelor of Arts degree and Columbia University for a PhD in Sociology.^[3] Her sister, Elizabeth Kostova, is also an author.^[4]

After earning her PhD, Johnson taught at the University of Michigan.^[3] While there, she published "Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime" through the University of Chicago Press.^[5] She was promoted from assistant to Associate Professor of Organizational Studies in 2011.^[6] Johnson eventually left the University of Michigan to join the faculty of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College.^[7] During the 2015–16 academic term, she was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.^[8]

Johnson was a Mellon Visiting Scholar at The New York Botanical Garden’s Humanities Institute in 2016, where she conducted research on David Hosack.^[9] After her first proposal was rejected for being "too academic,"^[10] she published a biography of David Hosack in 2018 titled "American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic."^[11] Her book was subsequently nominated for the National Book Award for Nonfiction,^[12] Pulitzer Prize for History,^[13][14] and LA Times Book Prize.^[15] The following year, she received the 2019 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize^[16] and was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize.^[17]