2012.03 — A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson (2003)
The title of this book by best-selling author and noted American-with-a-British-accent Bill Bryson might be amended to A Short History of Science. While Bryson does indeed investigate everything from the Big Bang down to the machinations of mitochondrial DNA and all stops in between, alongside everything are the stories of the men and women who have brought this knowledge to light. Primarily, in fact, what we have is a short history of modern science, with most of the science coming from no earlier than the mid-17th century.
In any event Bryson’s Short History is a very enjoyable book, wherein he presents his complex subjects in a manner readable to the lay person (i.e., me), without dumbing anything down. Early in the book he states that much of science deals with figures both infinitely large and infinitesimally small, and that his aim is to deliver it to the reader in a digestible way, spelling things out rather than using scientific notation whenever possible, and using analogies rather than bald numbers (Bryson thankfully never uses “football fields” as a unit of measurement, but he does tell you for example that if you wove all the DNA in a single cell out in one continuous thread it would stretch from the Earth to the Moon multiple times).
As Bryson recounts the stories of various scientific discoveries, he manages to include fascinating trivia or entertaining stories about the scientists who made the discoveries, often including amusing coincidences along the way. In describing the original discovery of dinosaur bones and fossils, we’re also told the etymology of the vine wisteria, and the origin of the tongue-twister “She sells seashells by the sea shore.” In the chapter on water, we learn that the surface of the Pacific Ocean is 1.5 feet higher on its western shore, due to the centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation — for some reason this factoid thrills me to the point of near queasiness. It is by means such as these (in addition to his sense of humor and overall skill as a writer) that Bryson can keep your interest in sometimes dry or hard to fathom concepts for nearly 500 pages.
A Short History is a recommended read for anyone with even a casual interest in…well, anything. Read it to learn about cavemen, bacteria, plate tectonics, quantum gobbledygook, and how Isaac Newton once stuck a needle in his eye “just to see what would happen.” And don’t be frightened off by the multiple chapters about how everything from microbes to asteroids to water to earthquakes are definitely going to kill you, because it’s nothing short of a statistical anomaly that you made it this far in the first place, so just relax and enjoy yourself. SCIENCE!
This is one of my favorite Bryson books. There’s been a lot of hype about it, and in my opinion, it’s pretty well deserved.