A Short History of Nearly Everything

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).

Book Log 2012

1. Triumph: the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics — Jeremy Schaap (2007) [review here]

2. The Wapshot Chronicle — John Cheever (1957) [review here]

3. A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson (2003) [review here]

4. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon — Frederik Pohl (1980) [review here]

5. From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek‘s Dr. McCoy — Terry Lee Rioux (2005) [review here]

6. Andersonville — MacKinlay Kantor (1955)

7. On Writing — Stephen King (2000)

8. Liberia: History of the First African Republic — Abayomi Cassell (1970)

9. The Bridge of San Luis Rey — Thornton Wilder (1927)

10. March — Geraldine Brooks (2005)

11. Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag — Kang Chol-Hwan & Pierre Rigoulot (2000)

12. True Grit — Charles Portis (1968)

13. America’s War: Talking about the Civil War and Emancipation on their 150th anniversaries — edited by Edward L. Ayers (2011)

14. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas — Gertrude Stein (1933)

15. Under the Banner of Heaven: A story of violent faith — Jon Krakauer (2003)

16. Instant City: life and death in Karachi — Steve Inskeep (2011)

17. A Study in Scarlet — Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)

18. God Is Not Great: How religion poisons everything — Christopher Hitchens (2007)

19. Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam — James M. McPherson (2002)

20. The Day the Martians Came — Frederik Pohl (1988)

21. Lavinia — Ursula K. Le Guin (2008)

22. Drift: the unmooring of American military power — Rachel Maddow (2012)

23. Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion (1968)

24. Hotel Du Lac — Anita Brookner (1984)

25. Paul Newman: a life — Shawn Levy (2009)

26. Every Third Thought: a novel in five seasons — John Barth (2011)

27. Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) — Unknown (ca. AD 1200). Translated by Frank G. Ryder (1962)

28. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War — Tony Horwitz (2011)

29. The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe — Peter Godwin (2010)

30. Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power, of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill — Thomas Hobbes (1651)

31. The Taqwacores — Michael Muhammad Knight (2004)

32. No Man Knows My History: the life of Joseph Smith — Fawn M. Brodie (1945)

33. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice — William Shakespeare (1603/04)

34. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — Michelle Alexander (2010)

35. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln — Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

36. Breakfast of Champions — Kurt Vonnegut (1973)

37. Danny, the Champion of the World — Roald Dahl (1975)

38. Last Orders — Graham Swift (1996)

39. Beowulf — Unknown (ca. AD 650-1000). Translated by Seamus Heaney (2000)

40. Grendel — John Gardner (1971)

41. Soccernomics: why England loses, why Spain, Germany, and Brazil win, and why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey—and even Iraq—are destined to become the kings of the world’s most popular sport — Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (2009)