A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson takes us on a journey starting with the origins of the universe and what science knows about it and how scientists have come to this knowledge. Bryson tells us about what we need to know to understand the larger concepts in this book but does not go into such minute detail that we are overwhelmed. Bryson combines a smooth, easy writing style with wit and humor and presents us with the story of our planet. Bryson takes us from the dawn of the Big Bang through primordial life on Earth through the evolution of the species right up into the beginnings of human civilization. The story is well told with scientific information but also with the stories of the scientists themselves and the circumstances of their lives and how they came to discover the previously hidden secrets of our planet. While the paragraphs on the scientists may seem like digression, I found it to be vital to the book because this reveals how and why scientists believe what they do and what theories have been discarded and what sort of struggle there was for a particular theory to be accepted.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a fairly long book and comes in at approximately 500 pages in hardcover format. It is packed with a lot of information, though in a highly readable form. The book is an investment in time, but I think that it is a time investment well worth making (despite the fact that by the end of the book I had a difficult time remembering things from the beginning of it). Excellent book. Highly recommended.

The wide range of the scientific topics that Bryson embraces is astounding. The smallest living entities and far away galaxies are included in this work. The beauty of his prose makes even the onslaught of scientific numbers digestible and entertaining. Perhaps his thoroughness is an offshoot of the travel guides he has written. He ambles through the speculations about the earths past and scientific prognostications on its future. For the faint of heart, skip the sections about asteroids striking the earth or the coming ice ages.

It is in the descriptions of the scientist that this book really shines. The idiosyncrasies of the people are at times wondrous and amusing. The profiles of the well known and unknown are here and are equally fascinating. I heard Bryson recount on CSPAN the interesting story of a French Astronomer attempting to track the transit of Venus and decided to get the book. There were many more stories of vanity, determined pursuit, treachery of co-workers, stubborn maintainers of the status quo and profound achievement here. It was almost as if the people who created the VH-1 Behind the Music series decided to focus on scientists instead of musicians (except there were no gratuitous drug use or groupies). I found it fascinating to do an image search on google to see the faces of some of the scientists mentioned in the book like Fritz Zwicky and James Watson.