A Short History of Nearly Everything

• #2 in Best Science Books

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Bill Bryson is an excellent writer, no question. He's at once friend and informative, chummy without being condescending. The problem is that Bill Bryson is not a terribly well informed writer.

I read an interview with Bryson in New Scientist not long ago in which he admitted that he really didn't understand a lot of what all these scientists were telling him, and unfortunately that's all too clear in reading this book. As a consequence Bryson gives you a good deal of infomation peppered with some really horrid misunderstandings and errors. I'm reminded in reading "A Short History" of Bryson's book on language, in which he either repeats or invents any number of terribly inaccurate folk etymologies. Also a very readble but terribly inaccurate tome. He's great fun to read on personalities (although the accuracy of some of his characterizations is suspect) and he does have an ear for fascinating trivia, but science takes a back seat to all of this. All too often we get the beginning of an explanation that trails off into a "and anyways it's all very complicated but it's it just fascinating" sort of gee-whiz summary. One suspect that we've just reached the point where Bryson has either lost the thread of understanding or perhaps just decided that he doesn't care to understand something any further.

As enjoyable as Bryson can be to read, I only wish he'd had his manuscript vetted by editors with a solid science background, or better yet, collaboraated with a scientist on the writing. As it is, I can't really recommend this book. The reader interested in how science has shaped the world would do far better to read James Burke's justly well-regarded "Connections".

I've spent the past few days devouring Bill Bryson's latest work: A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's an incredible read and reinforces how amazing the history of the earth really is. Bill's wit and comedic timing that has made all his previous travel books instant classics is absent, but it has been replaced with an enthusiastic and somber tone that is just as interesting to read. I've enjoyed all his previous books, but I like this one just as much, even though it's a bit of a departure.

Bryson took three years to research the book by conducting interviews and reading lots of history and it comes through in the text. You almost feel like you were in the room with Bill, following prominent scientists around, asking newbie questions. Bryson comes off as genuinely enthralled by the subjects at hand and you learn new things along with him. The narrative reminds me a great deal of James Burke's books and Connections TV series. Bryson not only tells the tales of how things came to be, but he's constantly weaving a link between all the various stories and pulling similar themes out.

It's a fantastic book and reminds me why I was so enamored by science in school. It also drives the point home many times that we are very, very lucky to be standing here, doing what we do everyday. The chances that the universe came together to enable it are insanely slim for all sorts of reasons as you will quickly find out.

I picked this one up expecting "good". Instead, I got one of the most delightful reading experiences in science that I have ever had. What a wonderful surprise.

Bryson tries to do what most school textbooks never manage to do, explain the context of science in a way that is relevant to the average person. At the beginning of the book, he recalls an event from his childhood when he looked at a school text and saw a cross-section of our planet. He was transfixed by it, but noticed that the book just dryly presented the facts ("This is the core." "This part is molten rock." "This is the crust.", etc.), but never really explained HOW science came to know this particular set of facts. That, he quite correctly points out, is the most interesting part. And that is story he sets out to tell in this book.

Bryson obviously spent a great deal of time and effort developing and checking his facts and presentation. He obviously enjoyed every minute of it too, and it shows. Never have I read a book where the author conveyed such joyful awe of what we have learned as a species (with the possible exception of some of Richard Feynman's books).

My benchmark for this kind of book is usually; How well does it explain modern physics? There are few books out there that manage to explain relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory in a way that doesn't make your eyes glaze over. The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav is the best of the lot in my opinion. While this book did not change my opinion, Bryson's explanations of these mind-bending theories are not only lucid and sensible, they are also full of his telltale tongue-in-cheek side comments and therefore are just plain fun to read. However, Bryson goes way beyond Zukav, focusing not only on physics, but on the full panoply of scientific disciplines. He also focuses more on the discoverers themselves, and the process of discovery.

One of the things I like about this book is that Bryson again and again makes sure credit is given where credit it due. For many discoveries, he tells us the "official" story, but also tells us the often untold story of the small-time scientist who got the idea first but, for whatever reason, never got credit. This happens a great deal in science, and Bryson appears to be on a quest to set the record straight when he can. The result is not only charming storytelling, it's got a certain justice that just feels good.

I didn't have huge expectations for this book, but I am delighted to report that it is one of the best of its kind. Hurrah to Bryson for writing it, and hurrah to me for stumbling on it.

This book is the type of book that would inspire you to become a biologist or a geologist or an astronomer. From this book you are able to see bits and pieces of famous scientists lives and get a feeling by the end that its not all fun and games but at the same time it soooo very worth it to dedicate your life to the pursuit of furthering the knowledge of your fellow human beings and in some small way pushing our species in a positive direction. From reading this book you find out how all the knowledge from hundreds of years ago has become the basis of where we are today. This is conveyed extremely well to the audience. The other thing which is conveyed so very well is the power and destructive force of mother nature here on earth and in space. Parts of this book read better than seeing an end of the world movie because the author is so good at getting a vivid picture drawn in the reader's minds eye.

This book is so good and so comprehensive I can see myself reading this over again.

Thank you Bill Bryson for your hard, extensive research! Quite remarkable.

I am a big fan of Bill Bryson's travelogues. I was therefore surprised when I cam across this, somewhat more weighty, tome. But I am pleased that I picked it up.

The author says he didn't do very well in science when he was in school because the teachers and texts seemed to be hiding all the good stuff. Now, as an adult, he's gone after the good stuff. And he's the guy to write it so the rest of us can understand. Not only does he write clearly, but he's very good at explaining as much as a normal person can understand (of relativity, for example), while pointing to the stuff that's weird, and setting aside the stuff that you have to be a specialist to understand.

He also is very good at giving credit to people who thought of things but were ignored until someone else came along and took credit. This has happened all too frequently, and it's good for the record to be set straight.

If you too were afraid of science, this is a wonderful book. If you already know a lot of this but just like to read enjoyable writing--it's also a wonderful book.

It's hard to imagine Bill Bryson topping A Walk in the Woods, and perhaps he hasn't - but with A Short History of Nearly Everything, he comes damn close. Undaunted at the prospect of taking on everything in the universe as a topic, Bryson pretty much succeeds in taking us on a journey through his quirky mind with his own insatiable curiosity as a tour guide who both asks and answers questions the rest of us probably never thought to pose.
If you like Bryson, this is a must read. If you've never read him before, well, you'll quickly become a regular reader such as myself, eagerly awaiting each of his books as they come off the press.

When I picked up "A Short History of Nearly Everything" I had abosolutely no idea what to expect. As a travel junkie who can rarely afford to travel myself, I grab Bill Bryson's books whenever I can with great enthusiasm. His keen wit in presenting characters and scenes is unparalleled, and in this new romp (in which he narrates a journey through not just a county but through the scientific world as well as space and time) he is in top form.

Bryson's everyman prose makes the mysteries of scientific thought interesting, understandable, and funny. The book begins with the building blocks of the universe and works its way slowly down through the smaller mysteries such as life on earth and why human beings even exist. However, the science of the work does not become overwhelming to the lay-reader and Bryson maintains an admirable sense of wonder and joy throughout.

And, of course, the text is delightfully littered with anecdotes about the men and women who have dedicated themselves to discovering and defining these mysteries. Both living and dead, these men and women take on life that leaps off the pages, making them feel like old friends. And from the comfort of your favorite reading spot, you feel like you could be sharing a pint with them and Bill in a cozy pub somewhere.

I recommend this book to anyone who has a inclination for pondering the large questions of life but who is equally interested in keeping his or her sense of humor and sanity in tact.

I have to admit I ordered the CD blindly--not quite sure what Bill Byrson was going to get up to, and I was pleasantly surprised that the history of science was the agenda. I enjoy science history books and the light-hearted travelogues of Bill's, so this was perfect for me. Bill's other books have a more rambling tone to them and I was very impressed with his logical organization of this vast material. Entertaining and informative as well as an inspiration for further reading (and listening)--thanks, Bill!

Bill Bryson's "Short History" was aimed at people like me, I believe; a humanities major who found the sciences an alien universe, incomprehensible to those who hadn't mastered its formulas and jargon. His three years of reading, research and interviewing has resulted in an accessible, educational, entertaining book that tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions, such as where did the universe come from? and what makes humans human? Bryson was interested not only in what the answers to the questions are, but how we found those answers, and who the people were who unlocked these mysteries.
I suspect that those who are well versed in the sciences might find this a bit superficial (after all, the entire story of the universe is a lot to pack into less than 500 pages), but if you're looking to fill in some gaps in your knowledge of our world, this book is for you. Take the journey with Bryson; you'll enjoy the trip.

I found the title of this work somewhat misleading. Perhaps it should have been called A History of the Natural Sciences or maybe even A Short History of Natural History. Nevertheless, science books often do not sell well so I am sure
the idea in titling the book A Short History of Nearly Everything was to attract more of a broad readership. The book itself isn't awful but certainly reads like a survey work. In other words, you won't learn complicated how-tos of scientific
methodology but you will get a good general idea of a lot of different topics. Some of the things discussed are the origin of the universe, the solar system, the arising of life, and of course man himself or homo sapiens. I found it slightly paradoxical that Bryson spends a good portion of the book building up this almost supernatural-like awe in the reader for the amazing position we find ourselves in of being alive and also of the magical wonder of the universe itself. It's enough to make even the most staunched atheist have reverence. In fact, I could see an atheist while reading the book saying that's God doing that! However, towards the end of the book Bryson seems to take the counter view that we are ultimately doomed to extinction and with continued acts of
stuipidity will be just another blip on the evolutionary scale. Despite this the book reads okay for the most part but is interspersed with relative periods of dryness. However, it's difficult to talk about things like algae and lichens and
keep everyone interested at all times. Nevertheless, a pretty good read recommended if you keep in mind that it's a survey book that will help you do well on trivial pursuit but is not going to give you the know-how to usurp the current model of the universe. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

If you are an intellectual snob of the highest order who likes impressing other intellectual snobs with quirky and unusual historical anecodes at university dinner parties, then by god, this book is for you.

On the other hand, if you are a casual history and science buff who likes to understand the big picture, and not necessarily every name, date, and minor story along the way, then this book is a total waste of money.

This book is little more than a encyclopedia of what most people would consider useless information. Bryson speeds through literally hundreds of names and events, most of which you have never heard of, nor will ever hear of again, even in the presence of other history buffs/teachers. Worst of all, his humor is of the sort that can ONLY appeal to snobbish intellectuals and professors.

All too often, Bryson gives significant figures and events only small bits of print, before moving hastily on to a series of entirely obscure people, whose contributions were not necessarily significant in their own right in any way. Indeed, a significant portion of this book is devoted to relatively unimportant people whose only value was that they in some way or another had a domino affect on someone more noteworthy.

The pace at which this book moves from one worthless anecdote/person to another is so fast that only those with photographic memories will be able to retain more than 10% after reading this book.

All in all, I would say that the worthless anecdotes outweigh the truly historical events and figures by about 20 to 1 in this book. At minimum. Most people should not waste their money if they really want to learn the most important things about history and science.

A final note. I was not seeking a book chock full of complicated science when I read this book. On the other hand, I was hoping for a book that generally focused on all the highy points of scientific history, so that I could forge a roadmap in my own mind. Instead, this book is so polluted with the meaninglesss information that it became impossible to walk away with the roadmap of understanding that I was looking for.

Amazing! A typical C-student's last-minute make-up paper!
Knowing nothing but pretending to know everything. I love you.

The right sub-title must be one of the followings:

1, For pre-school kids;
2, For high-school drop-out;
3, For those who know English only but absolutely nothing else

I believe Amazon should have negative rating!

A wonderfully written little trip from the beginning of... well, everything right through to the ascendancy of humans. Bryson's mastery of language and his ability to turn a phrase are put to good use in taking a look at the theories and science behind astrophysics, geology, archeology, paleontology, and several other "ologies" as well. The best part is that Bryson manages to cover all this without being boring or overly breezey.

Almost everyone will find some part of this book interesting. Even if you weren't a straight A student in science class back in high school or college, the bits of science you do know are probably woven into the grander tapestry of science and time in a way you'll appreciate.

Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" has a lot of good points. It is above all a very entertaining and engaging read. Bryson writes in an informal, chatty style that at times reminded me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His subject is, essentially, life, the universe and (nearly) everything. Bryson aims to explore the history of science in general, summarizing not only what we know, but also how we know it - he sets himself the wonderful goal of trying to explain "how scientists work things out". It's a big task, and had Bryson accomplished it, this would have been an incredible book. As it is, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is still a worthwhile read, despite its flaws, which I will soon discuss.

The organization of the book is partly chronological, partly thematic. It is divided into six parts and thirty relatively short chapters. The earlier parts focus on the physical sciences, including astronomy, cosmology, geology, physics and physical chemistry. The latter half of the book deals primarily with the life sciences - biology, ecology, botany, zoology, oceanography, organic chemistry and so on. It's a considerable challenge to organize such a large amount of material dealing with so many distantly-related subjects, and Bryson pulls it off quite well. I can make no criticism of his large-scale organization.

However, the devil is in the details, and many of the details Bryson chooses to include in his "Short History" have little if anything to do with what he's supposedly writing about. He has a persistent tendency to head off on irrelevant tangents and lose himself in anecdotes about some of the curious characters that have walked the halls of science. Bryson wastes far too much ink relating bizarre factoids picked up in the course of his research, from William Buckland's dining habits to Gideon Mantell's twisted spine. He especially loves recounting the details of feuds and squabbles between scientists - the more intense, underhanded, unreasonable and destructive, the better. In all of this, the material we picked up the book to explore can get somewhat lost. Chapter 10, for instance, is "an important and salutary tale of avarice, deceit, bad science, several needless deaths, and the final determination of the age of the Earth" - in that order of importance.

Reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything", I did greatly appreciate Bryson's ability to make clear how much scientists don't know and are still working to figure out. However, I was disappointed that despite his promise to explore "how scientists work things out", Bryson often just quotes results and conclusions without further explanation. Sometimes he doesn't even do that - modern physics is largely dismissed as wacky and incomprehensible.

Even worse, Bryson makes several glaring errors in his discussion of physics (and perhaps also in other areas that I'm not so familiar with), far worse than any I've seen in other popular science books I've read. For example, he suggests particles with "spin" are actually spinning about an axis (which they are not) and presents entanglement as a violation of relativity (which it is not). Bryson also incorrectly claims that the production of black holes within future particle accelerators would destroy the world. In fact, these microscopic black holes would evaporate in a fraction of a nanosecond - something that would have been very nice to learn in "A Short History of Nearly Everything".

I enjoy reading popular science, and much of what I've read I've found better than Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything". I would especially recommend Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Alan Guth and Martin Rees for physics, astronomy and cosmology, and Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould for biology. However, I know of no other work that attempts to cover nearly as many fields as Bryson's "Short History". Even though Bryson's book wasn't able to live up to its initial promise, it was a decent read - one I recommend, though with some reservations.

I think this book should replace the texts used in most high school science courses. If it did, I think we would see more kids pursuing science careers, because Bryson does a wonderful job of conveying the joy and excitement of doing science as well as a sense of awe that our world evolved as it did.

Sure, given a book of this nature, there is plenty people could quibble with. Bryson's writing style is amusing and entertaining, though it doesn't come close to matching "A walk in the woods," (but then again, not much could...). Readers expecting the humor quotient of that book or Bryson's other travel books will be disappointed, however. And although one can tell Bryson struggled valiantly to make the chapter on quantum physics understandable, he didn't succeed (at least for me). For example, he relates a study showing that one atomic particle can affect another atomic particle 70 miles away, simultaneously. I still don't understand how that can happen and wish somebody could explain it to me.

But those are minor complaints compared to what this book is able to accomplish, which is to provide a broad, yet admirably detailed, education in the physical and biological sciences. I am overjoyed to see this book on the bestseller lists, because if enough people read it, we can no longer be accused of being the scientific ignoramuses that we largely have been. I think it could also work to serve more effectively as an environmental wake-up call than the wide array of existing polemical books that are read only by the already convinced.

Lastly, perhaps the aspect of the book I admired and enjoyed the most is the way Bryson provides the human side of science through his frequent character sketches of the quirks and foibles of the many scientists whose work is reviewed. I may soon forget, once again, all three of Newton's laws of motion, but I will never--for the rest of my life--forget that he once inserted a rod behind his eyeball and stirred it around "just to see what would happen." This book is worth reading just for the anecdotes, and along the way you will learn an incredible amount of science.

As a biologist I have great problems with Bryson's book. He is certainly able to create interesting analogies that capture the reader's attention. As a matter of fact - the book is filled with them. In terms of content and perspective I find that the book is lacking. I actually have a hard time reading it without feeling nauseous.
How can Bryson take on the task of writing this kind of book? He is trying to encapsulate some of the great discoveries and perspectives within the rapidly growing field of science. I think that perspective is somewhat like a good wine. It takes time to build and to "see" the world with eyes enriched by the vision of science. Bryson took a few years off, read some books and talked to some eminent researchers. As a result we have some kind of "Reader's Digest" science book. Interestingly, people seem to love it. One reader even proposed to use this kind of book as a science text in our schools.
I love art history and the different works made by an amazing array of artists over the last five thousand years. Am I qualified to write a history of art? NO! I certainly could try to transfer my passion for the field, but my perspective would be hampered by a lack of training. I would need decades to ponder the different art forms, the artists and the religious and cultural changes occurring in the world. Would I do the world a favor by transferring my passion about art to the public? Definitely! Should my book be viewed as good introduction to the history of art? Absolutely not!

These kinds of books SHOULD be written by people active in the field. Of course, these scientists will need to have the gift to transform their perspectives into digestible paragraphs. A great example would be Carl Sagan that truly brought astronomy to the public mind. It takes many years to really start to "see" these fields and Bryson continuously sounds like a neophyte as he tramples through the different areas of science. I appreciate his genuine interest in learning about the world around him. The process of learning and discovering is a wonderful journey, but did he really need to publish this book?

I have looked at sections which are related to things I work on, or have worked on. This book has more errors than any pop science
book I have seen in a long, long time.

Bill Bryson has done something exceedingly useful: written a book that explains the major tenants of science in a form that non-scientists can understand and enjoy.

This is a smart and intelligent book that retains Bryson's charming and witty voice in the telling of the broad range of natural history. It is interesting that this author can retain his appeal across mediums -- he is known as a witty travel writer and has also produced fun and intelligent books on the history of the English language. Now, he goes far afield and explains natural philosophy, as the sciences were once called, in a way that textbooks have avoided ever since there have been science textbooks.

Bryson tackles space, the origins of the universe, geology, the formation of the Earth, physics, the beginning and development of life, cells, DNA and humans in this natural world round-up. Each chapter follows a similar format. A fascinating tidbit is introduced to draw the reader in, the history of understanding in each field is discussed and the evolution of thinking to the current state of understanding explained. This format is enlivened by the personalities past and present (including science's crackpots, iconoclasts and geniuses).

Besides the Bryson wit, what makes this a phenomenally good read is the author's ability to relate scientific principles with examples that laymen can understand and that clarify often confusing scientific knowledge and theories.

For example, I was floored to learn that our solar system is so vast, that it literally could not be drawn to scale on any size in a meaningful way. Neptune is five times farther from Jupiter than Jupiter is from Earth. On a scale drawing with Earth the size of a pea, Jupiter would be a thousand feet away and Pluto a mile and a half (and the size of a bacterium). Now that illustrates space in our immediate environs better than I've every seen it described before.

What is the largest concentration of magma waiting to blow? (and possibly blow us out of existence) It's under Yellowstone National Park. Ten percent of the weight of a six year old pillow is dead skin flakes, mites and mite dung. Most physicists think Einstein wasted the second half of his life pursuing a unified theory instead of thinking about other useful things. Every human cell contains DNA strands that are six feet long if laid end to end. The core of the Earth is as hot as the surface of the sun - and solid because of the immense pressure compacting that mass. Only three percent of the Earth's water is fresh, and almost all of this is in ice sheets - only a scanty .03% of the total is available to us a fresh, flowing water.

Interesting tidbits like the above abound. So do dire stories about past volcanic activity, changes in magnetism, changes in atmospheric conditions and asteroid impacts that have periodically befell Earth and helped move species development forward (usually by wiping out most species existing at the time). Could they/ would they happen in the future? Sure. However, the scale of time over which the next cataclysmic event may occur could be so far removed that we will have evolved into something else (or have found a way to blow up or steer threatening asteroids out of our way).

This book fascinates and amuses. If science textbooks had a bit of this ability to relate and engage during my time in school, I'd bet today there would be a lot more scientists working to figure out the remaining mysteries of our world.

This is a crumby book. John Gribbin covers the same ground, in 'Science - a history', and far more intelligently: in fact, large parts of Bryson's book read like copies of parts of Gribbin's book! Bryson's tome is not a 'short' history, and it is not of 'nearly everything'. He misses out loads of important science, and, as another reviewer has pointed out, he covers biographical trivia about scientists far better than he covers their scientific discoveries.
Further, his main thesis feeds into the unpleasant current hysteria about various scares which are supposed to reduce us all to the status of cowering victims. Chapter after chapter just retail scare stories. If the asteroids aren't about to hit us, then it'll be global warming that gets us. If it's not global warming, it will be global cooling. All, as usual with the scaremongers (see the Independent this month and forever), without any assessment of the real likelihood of any of these events occurring, no evidence of their probability. Don't bother with this book. Read a proper book by someone with some scientific education, like J. D. Bernal's Science in history, or Jacob Bronowski's The western intellectual tradition.

You've gotta hand it to Bill Bryson. Instead of cashing in on his status as the most popular travel writer in the business by merely cranking out one formulaic book a year as he easily could do, he decided to take on a monumental challenge outside of his area of expertise. Though "A Short History of Nearly Everything" does contain some of Bryson's standard lighthearted interviews, the bulk of his book about the world of science comes from what must have been exhausting and occasionally tedious research. The good news is that for the most part he succeeds in his attempt to make science writing palatable for the general reading public.

Though Bryson has always been a master at combining the humorous with the serious, this book finds him mostly treading in the latter territory. He comes up with just enough amusing anecdotes to liven up the subject matter, but there are few laugh out loud funny moments as in Bryson classics like "A Walk in the Woods" or "In a Sunburned Country." The trick he does manage to pull is making such topics as geology, biology, astronomy, meteorology and other scientific fields (for the most part) lively and interesting.

With each topic, Bryson gives an overall historical overview of how the various theories and research have evolved, giving nods to famous eccentrics like Sir Issac Newton and Charles Darwin and explaining why what they accomplished is so incredible (and valuable). He also gives numerous lesser-known scientific geniuses their proper due. It must be said, however, that at nearly 500 pages of narrative this is not an easy read. Some subjects even Bryson's magical pen just cannot breath much life into. Nevertheless, it is still a fascinating journey.

Overall, a challenging triumph from one of the best non-fiction authors working today.

When I picked up this book, I thought the "everything" in "nearly everything" was everything. In the introduction, the author makes it seem that way too. He fails to mention (anywhere in the book) that his perception of "everything" is just the natural sciences. It is a fun, engaging, acceptably thorough survey of the way mankind first discovered and now views the natural sciences, and for that, it is worth notice. But to say that it is a take on everything is not only wrong, but arrogant and blind.

The biggest part of "everything" is man's culture and it is not even regarded except in the findings of science. And even then, it is severely deficient. When it looks at Relativity or Evolution, for example, it passes up the opportunity for really exploring the theories so that the author can spend more time on the scientist's lives and events surrounding the actual science. I guess that's why it's a history, but getting just a taste is painful for those seeking more than just cocktail party anecdotes. The book doesn't even touch on all the sciences--most notably lacking a survey of psychology. Neuroscience is perhaps at the forefront of "everything" and it isn't even hinted at here.

Instead, Bryson broadcasts, in the officious, repetitive and sarcastic way so many outside of science do, that man and his culture are insignificant, lucky and dangerous. Amnesia strikes the author several times as he asserts how innovative and creative we have been by examining a few of the great natural philosophers and then abruptly claims how harmful and puny we are. He will claim how vast the earth is and how easily it (or an asteroid) could destroy the insignificant mankind and then notes how we are destroying the earth and are a likely candidate for the most destructive thing in the universe.

Bryson sees man's product as shameful and the rest of the universe as brilliant and awesome. The truth of the latter should not necessitate the former. But what else can one expect from someone who thinks "everything" is physical and happens without man's interference?

For a good survey of the thought behind science, read "The Dream of Reason" by Anthony Gottlieb.

For a great survey of the greatest cultural era in history, read "From Dawn to Decadence" by Jacques Barzun.

For insight into the relationship between man, nature and the metaphysical, read "Justice and Equality" by E. Robert Morse.

Very readable. Jumps a little from topic to topic, but in a story-telling sort of way. It is a flying survey of the history of the natural sciences, so there's broad but not deep coverage of topics.

Very entertaining bits about the personalities of science. Sorta like the History Channel can make history so much more interesting than your history teacher did, Bryson makes the history of natural science very accessible.

My only complaint is the last chapter. Bryson spends 400+ pages basically saying the universe is really complex, Earth's history of weather and animal life is extremely complex, there's a whole lot of stuff we don't know...but he seems to accept as Gospel the idea that humans are causing rapid extinction of species. It's a conclusion that is refuted (at least weakened) by the entire opus that precedes it. (I'm not arguing that we are or we aren't - it was just a jarringly inconsistent conclusion.)

Overall, it was a very fast read. You won't walk away understanding the General Theory of Relativity much better than you do, but you'll have fun and learn the stuff you wish you'd learned in school.

I have been addicted to science popularizations since junior high school, beginning with Isaac Asimov and going on to include Robert Jastrow, Carl Sagan, Steven Pinker, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose, Paul Davies, Murray Gell-Mann, and many others. I have also read a few of Bryson's other books, including The Mother Tongue and Made in America, which I found delightful. However, I was a bit skeptical of this foray into explicating science, since Bryson is no scientist (unlike all the others, possibly excepting Asimov, who gets a special polymath exemption). I was delightfully surprised at this very engaging book. The scope is rather narrower than the title suggests, limited mainly to cosmology, geology, paleontology, and evolution, but there is very little "dumbing down" and the stories of the personalities involved make it a fascinating read. There was a lot of stuff I already knew (and I caught a few minor errors) but I encountered a lot of material that was new to me, and the writing is always engaging and clear.

This is history for the layman. I myself wouldn't have used the title "Nearly Everything", rather, "of the World" or "of Nearly every Science". Bryson deals mostly with scientific history pertaining to the universe. From the beginning of the universe to stars, planets, matter such as atoms, quarks, our earth, chemicals, geology, astronomy, human evolution, dinosaurs, scientific principles from einstein to newton to darwin, and much more. He covers many bumbling and brilliant scientists along the way, giving special attention to those whose work happened to have the misfortune of not being discovered, laughed at and later proven correct, or their discoveries being credited to others. Unlike any other history book however, Bryson does it with his own unique and interesting style. He presents it all in an easy to digest, though sometimes superficial manner that makes it a very enjoyable read. For those who happen to be looking for more depth, this is still a great read as it presents many many topics and notable names to choose from as a starting point to begin your journeys deeper into the study of the history of our universe. As one who especially appreciates Bryson's sense of humor, I find this book a bit lacking in such, however Bryson does have some good quips interspersed to keep things light. All in all, another fine book from a fine author. P.S., doesn't Bryson know that Elvis isn't dead?, there's a teaser for you.

One of the best armchair books on science ever. The author is very fair, setting the record straight wherever he can by giving credit to the smalltime guy where credit is due. Bryson explains things (in this case, science) in a way that is meaningful to everyone. I agree with a previous review I read that says the only other book that accomplishes the same is Remick's "West Point: Character, Leadership, Education, Thomas Jefferson" in which the history-philosophy behind America-West Point (therefore, no way in conflict with Mr. Bryson's book about science) is explained in a way that's for everyone. Mr. Bryson's book is a fascinating and exciting journey through the history of science. If you take the trip, you'll both enjoy it and have a short education on nearly everything. I highly recommend it. You might also want to read Remick's book after you read Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" to have a "short history of everything".

I'm a Liberal Arts kind of guy, and science and math always left me cold. Having struggled through those difficult courses in high school, I resolved never to think about that type of thing again. Bill Bryson, however, is my kind of writer: erudite, and witty, with the uncanny knack of taking complicated ideas and conveying them in ways that non-technical people can uhderstand, and enjoy. This book is an excellent example of Bryson at his best, and he gave me a new appreciation of science. I only wish that the textbooks I had used in school were this interesting; I might have embarked upon an entirely different career. If you were like me, and detested science, read this book; I know that you will very quickly change your mind.

I saw the author's disclaimers about his "inky embarassments" and lack of training in science, but was naive enough to assume that the reviewers and editors would assure this book's accuracy. My assumption was wrong. What I found as I jumped around to the parts that interested me most was entertaining and essentially well written text with many verifiable statements that served quite well to mask the numerous factual errors. I am not suggesting there is a hidden agenda here or a deliberate intent to mislead - only genuinely sloppy science and careless misrepresentation of facts. Unfortunately, this best selling book is now in many libraries and will be a primary source of misinformation for young or naive readers for years to come. This is not what the world needs - especially when it touches on so many critical issues of the day. What a pity it wasn't edited properly. What a shame I didn't heed the author's disclaimer and either bypass the book or read it for its entertainment value alone. Now, instead, I feel it is my duty to warn the young readers who have been led to this book that it is not the factual masterpiece that they might expect. This book appears to have far too many errors to have any value as the reference book that it purports to be. We live and learn.

Be warned, folks. This book is not for everyone. If you're a paranoid moron who believes that anything not found in the bible is a lie, please don't buy this book. If you're a frustrated scientist who can't accept that a layman, no matter how bright and articulate, can have anything relevant or enlightening to say about science, please don't buy this book.
However, most people, who like to read good writing, who have an active mental life and curiosity about the world around them, and can approach this book with an open mind and a little zeal, will absolutely love it. Bryson tackles an immense range of thorny and rather difficult topics and concepts and somehow manages to not only explain them but make them interesting and enjoyable. I am well trained in biology, chemistry, math and physics (although I would never identify myself as a scientist) but I wouldn't have thought that an excursion into particle physics or geology could be very compelling. Bryson makes it so, with a gift for description and analogy that brings these subjects out of the realms of theory and academia. He brings them to life. Part of the charm of the book are the fascinating glimpses of scientists, adventurers,mathematicians and discoverers who all played a role in figuring out this world we live in and on. Isaac Newton is dissatisfied with the system of mathematics that he has been using, so he invents calculus. Einstein stares out the window of the Swiss patent office where he works and has the most important thought that has ever been thought, E=mc2. Brilliant men and women discover radioactivity, organize elements into the periodic table, figure out systems of taxonomic classification, and calculate everything from the weight of the earth to the weight of a quark. It's fascinating, almost breathtaking at times. I could go on and on, but I'll say this instead. If you have a nimble and open mind, a modicum of intelligence, and a healthy curiosity about yourself, the earth, the universe and most everything in it, this book is for you. Bravo, Mr. Bryson. Exceedingly well done.

...but the preface (the first few paragraphs, no less!) to this expensive tome reads, essentially: "This book is potentially riddled with errors." This is a little like the instructions on a packet of cake mix telling you that, once you're finished, you might not actually have a cake and, furthermore, it will be the fault of the mix, and not your own clumsiness. I'm sorry, Mr Bryson, but if you're going to distill human knowledge down into a few hundred pages, don't introduce it by saying "I am essentially ignorant and this is the product of my quest to erase that ignorance. However, chances are I only got a little bit of it right, so you probably won't want to pay attention to most of it." Just as children acquire bad driving habits from their parents, so too will readers acquire flawed knowledge from this 'Every Person's Big Book Of Stuff'. Mr Bryson's charisma can only take him so far when he tackles a subject like this, and those looking for the humour demonstrated in his excellent travel monologues will be sorely disappointed, and perhaps tempted to have a bit of a cry. Five stars for effort, minus three for execution.

Having just returned from Kuwait, and having read a few too many 'classics' whilst there, I was thirsty for something hot-off-the-shelf. The ambitious title of this book, coupled with my fondness for Bill Bryson's work, made this an easy choice. This book absolutely fascinated me. I spent two days of my post-deployment vacation glued to the couch reading. It was time well spent.

Somewhat of a departure from Bryson's typical travel narrative, this travel narrative takes the reader back aeons and follows roads of human curiosity, discovery, and ancestry. Akin to such books as 'The Mother Tongue' and 'Made in America', 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' is very much so an educational experience and a fun one at that. Anyone with an interest in zoology, archaeology, astronomy, geology, physics, paleontology, et al. will love this book; those with simply insatiable curiosities will too.

This book fits comfortably amongst my favorite non-fiction reads. I trust others will agree.

I found the discussions about the origins of the universe and partical physics very interesting and down-to-earth. Bryson has a singular wit and a talent for distilling the complex.

Unfortunately, I found myself skimming over the more mundane details of various scientists' lives. But hey, if you want to know excruciating minutiae about the life and times of Dmitri Mendeleyev, then this book is for you!

Also, I found the smattering of Left-Wing [stuff] a bit disturbing. Bryson takes at face value the insane assertions of the Environmental Wacko crowd and rounds it all out with a self-loathing dissertation on the evils of mankind. I didn't know this, but apparently mankind may actually be the "universe's worst nightmare"! Somehow, I think one more chapter would have been all it would have taken for him to determine that Capitalism was to blame.

Anyhow, with that in mind, it's an interesting read if you want to know more about the history of science and if you don't take the questionable "morality" parts too seriously.

Popularizers of science abound: Isaac Asimov, Marcus Chown, Richard Dawkins, Paul Davies, Timothy Ferris, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, and Steven Weinberg, to name a few. Add another name to the list: Bill Bryson.

In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson, who lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, has written a lucid work on, well, just about everything: physics, biology, chemistry, zoology, paleontology, astronomy, cosmology, geology, genetics, meteorology, oceanography, and taxonomy.

From "the Big Bang" (the beginning of the universe) to "the Big Birth" (the appearance of life on Earth), Bryson translates the arcane, esoteric mysteries of science into comprehensible language, and does so with wit, wisdom, sharp-eyed observations, and hilarious comments. He shows that science need not be boring; it can be fun.

In the Introduction, Bryson confesses that not long ago he didn't know what a proton was, didn't know a quark from a quasar. Appalled by his ignorance of his own planet, Bryson determined to take a crash course in science, and for three years he devoted himself intensively to reading books and journals dealing with science, and pestering scientific authorities with his "dumb questions." This book is the result of his project.

By reading Bryson we learn that a physicist is the atoms' way of thinking about atoms and that a human being is a gene's way of making other genes. Whether writing of nematode worms or Cameron Diaz, Bryson uses analogies and anecdotes that help make science accessible, and less intimidating, to laypersons.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)said, "The closer one gets to a subject, the more problematic it becomes." The truth of this aphorism also applies to the baffling questions of science.

Things get a bit bizarre both in the macrocosmos (such as the superstring theory that postulates a universe with at least eleven dimensions) and the microcosmos (such as quantum physics that describes the quirky behavior of quarks, the erratic behavior of subatomic particles).

According to Bryson, some of the things scientists say begins to sound worryingly like the sort of thoughts that would make you edge away if conveyed to you by a stranger on a park bench. Matters in physics have now reached such a pitch that it is almost impossible for nonscientists to discriminate between the legitimately weird and the outright crackpot.

Alexander von Humboldt observed: "There are three stages in a scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person." Bryson rehabilitates many of these unsung thinkers by throwing the spotlight on overlooked and underappreciated scientists.

In spite of the brilliant contributions of scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin, many of the "facts" about the universe and life on Earth owe as much to supposition and speculation as to science.

Bryson devotes an intriguing chapter to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, as explained in two seminal works, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

Trouble is, the mechanism of natural selection ("Darwin's singular idea") needed a "deeper" explanatory mechanism. Not to worry. Thanks to the pioneering work of Gregor Mendel on dominant and recessive "genes" (Mendel himself never used the word) and the decoding of the "double helix" of DNA by James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins, the mechanism of Darwin's natural selection has been found, an "engine" that powers the evolutionary process.

Interestingly, the DNA code reveals that human beings are 98.4 percent genetically indistinguishable from the modern chimpanzee. There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is chimpanzees and humans.

Readers well-versed in science may grumble that there's nothing much new here. However, Bryson wrote this book not for professionals but for laypersons. A Short History of Nearly Everything is an excellent primer for "the person in the street" wanting a (largely) comprehensible overview of science.

As many reviewers have noted, this book is very well written, but a little short on technical or scientific prowess. It is basically a history of the universe from the Big Bang to the appearance and development of modern humans. This broad overview of knowledge is discussed within the context of various historical and political developments and associated paradigm shifts which surround the progress of modern science. One could argue from the outset, that the social context of scientific developments within the book is probably more astutely expounded than the actual science itself, as Bill Bryson himself doesn't pretend to actually understand much of the science he discusses.

Discussions include the Big Bang theory, relativity, the formation of matter and energy, the life cycle of stars, the rise and evolution of life on earth, the periodic table, the geological record and the age of the earth, mass extinctions, snowball earth, panspermia, ice ages, plate tectonics, DNA, cells, genes, DNA, the evolution of hominids, species extinction, disease, and greenhouse. As mentioned, human politics and paradigm shifts feature prominently in the discussion. There is a quite on emphasis on geology and biology in general (and its various subdisciplines), with rather less on chemistry and physics (not to mention such fields as evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, neurology and the brain, etc etc), which probably reflects Bill Bryson's personal preference, and understanding.

The strength is the independant eye for detail and perspective, including weaknesses within scientific knowledge itself.
For example, I've always wanted to know just how much hominid material specimens we actually have-well the answer is about 5000 specimens, categorised into about 20 species (controversially). Now I know. I've also wanted to know what are the main cruxs with regards to the origin of life, well apparently the unknowns include dehyrdration linkages, including, specifically, making proteins. Other (of the many) curiosities include the rejection by Einstein of early ideas regarding plate tectonics, and the endemic corruption within 19th century Victorian science.

Weaknesses in the book include various technical faults, which Bill Bryson himself suspects are in the text. It seems that no trained geologist, for example, has actually edited the book, with such mistakes as implying the Hawaiian islands are part of the mid oceanic ridge system (p226). There is also an annoyingly consistent theme that goes like this: 'no plausible idea/theory has been proposed for scientific conundrum A or B'; or 'nobody has any idea'. Actually, more often than not solutions or theories HAVE been proposed for such a such a conundrum, but which have not been generally proved, or accepted. This is not quite the same thing. In historical discussions, the same common oversimplification occurs: "nobody had any idea", or "nobody believed him", when more often than not, a significant few actually did. (eg Alverez's bolide impact theory, and various others).

Also permeating throughout the text is a very conservative, and oftentimes, contradictory bias. He doesn't have, what you would call, a creative temperament. He is quite happy to accept knowledge by various leaps of faith (eg a universe arising from nothingness, which actually implies an eternal something), and in general, presents a very conservative scientific outlook, whilst at the same time repeatedly emphasising that science almost unanimously progresses through the overthrow of the very conservative bias which he himself often endorses. This is patently contradictory, but astute readers will notice an almost uncannily consistent, conservative bias towards the development of scientific knowledge, politics and progress. (An interesting example includes his statement that Arianism, an early christian movement/sect which rejected the idea of the Trinity, and of which Newtown was a secret believer, was a "dangerous and heretical sect". He doesn't seem to note the danger of actually telling, or enforcing on people, the idea that 3 equals 1).

In summary, the book is a useful and interesting read, (despite the above criticisms), strong on curious details, and particularly suited for the layperson or average reader (which was in fact its main target audience). Hoewever readers of a more technical level might be just a little disappointed.

"Scientists have a natural tendency to interpret finds in the way that most flatters their stature", he says on page 442. It seems that authors have this same natural tendency.

The first half of the book is spent revealing the amazing fact that we even exist in such an unbelieavably inhospitable and unlikely universe, galaxy, world, and ecosystem - all these systems endowed with mind-boggling improbabilities that all the greatest evolutionary scientists must admit exist. For example: "there may be as many as a million proteins in the human body, and each one is a miracle. By all the laws of probability proteins shouldn't exist." pg 288

But on the next page he does a 180 and while admitting that evolutionary theories don't make sense he still insists that they must be true, like: "if you make monomers wet they don't turn into polymers-except when creating life on Earth. How and why it happens then and not otherwise is one of biology's great unanswered questions." pg#291

From here on out he insists that evolutionary theories are true while admitting that they are improbable and mysterious, which sets the tone for the second half of the book. He never does, incidentally, explain how millions of proteins came into existence despite the fact that the improbability of any of them evolving is mind bogglingly remote. There are so many phrases like "algea learned to tap" and "chemicals figited to life" and "whatever prompted life to begin" and "it shouldn't happen, but somehow it does" and "it's a puzzle" and "quite suddenly an entirely new type of cell arose" and "eukaryotes 'learned' to form together into multi-cellular beings" - all without any explanation how this could have happened when radiation was destorying life and creating malignant cancers incredibly faster than it was creating these serendipitous small steps that resulted in a human, so that you wonder how much of your time you can afford to waste on his arrogant and narrow-minded insistence to avoid any suggestion involving divine intervention.

He does however have an answer that I find more satisfying than what most atheists produce, albeit incredibly lame, that life simply "wants" to evolve, and would have done so in whatever environment it started in - adapting to its environment whatever that environment and becoming totally intolerant to anything else, ultimately ending up with an ecosystem that seems amazingly improbable. Seems reasonable right? Until you ask, "why does it 'want' to evolve"? His answer: "it does really seem that the purpose of life is to perpetuate DNA" Pg#410 Well, maybe that's his purpose, but not mine.

In short his trite book, which reads more like the national enquirer of dead inventors and scientists than a history book, falls prey to the blind arrogance endemic to an atheist population who claims they have it all figured out despite that for everything new that we learn, we also learn how wrong we were about other things that their "theory of everything" relied upon.

A laudable effort by Bryson but really he should leave the science to the scientists. This is the kind of book that esteemed scientists like Murray Gell-Mann despair of. The book is a rough guide to science but is sadly peppered throughout by some elementary and embarrassing mistakes. For example on page 37 the author states that "the matter created in the Big Bang consisted exclusively of light gases, Helium, Hydrogen and Lithium" Lithium of course is not a gas but an alkali metal. On page 143 the author correctly cautions the reader not to confuse atomic number with atomic weight, yet two pages later he states in referring to the Periodic Table of elements "no one knows how high the number of elements might go, though anything beyond 168 as an atomic weight is speculative". I assume he himself has confused atomic weight with atomic number as all the elements above number 68, Erbium, have an atomic weight in excess of 168! And furthermore to suggest Becquerel was "careless" in leaving his uranium salts wrapped up in a drawer is just plain wrong and a disservice to Becquerel. I didn't finish the book as I honestly got fed up getting annoyed at all the mistakes the author made. I would advise anyone wishing to know more about any aspect of science to read books by scientists themselves.

I give this book my highest rating because I really enjoyed reading it, and that's what I really value you in a book. There are some negative things about the book - some explanations can ramble and get a bit dry. But the book is densely packed with fun facts and history from the perspective of the layman and Bryson's writing style makes it fun to read while maybe learning some things as well.

What I don't get are people that slam this book because it's poor science. It's Bill Bryson, not Stephen Hawking! This a common man who went on a quest for knowledge and is sharing what he learned. He doesn't claim to be writing a science textbook here. And I think he does a fair job acknowledging his weaknesses and portraying things in a tone that upholds his goal.

However, readers should know that this is not the fun romp of 'A Walk in the Woods'. It's more dense and not as funny, but still funny.

Science and Mathematics majors out there: Your reviews of this book are making you out as incredibly stupid and churlish. Surely, you could not have picked up a book with a title like this with the idea that you were going to encounter a detailed technical account of a new way to do triple integrals with multiple variables, replicate DNA using some newfound technique or plumb the depths of cosmological philosophy. The author states his intentions in the Introduction: To give the non-specialist an understandable overview of what scientists have discovered about our universe. This Bryson does in a most enjoyable fashion. I would recommend this book to anyone, even Science Ph.D.'s, who simply enjoy lucid, competent, witty writing about what we know. I simply don't understand why those who obviously don't enjoy such works bothered to buy, read, and review the book in such a sneering, unctuous manner. - I don't buy or review Harlequin romances, condemning them for not being on a par with Shakespeare.---Four stars. Even I would have liked just a little more technical detail to be thrown in.

I'm about 1/2-way through the book and I've found it to be very entertaining so far. However, I had wanted to use this as a reference (I teach science at a community college) and I have found two really stupid errors so far that any decent science editor should have corrected.

1. Loss of the Saturn V booster plans during a NASA reorganization. No. They still have them. The problem is how to build the dang things since you need 60's-era parts. Who's gonna make 'em?

2. Glass flows and all you have to do is look at old cathedral glass to prove it (it's thicker at the bottom). This one I hate because I was taught it. You know why cathedral glass is thicker at the bottom? Here's a hint- only 1/2 will be thicker at the bottom. The other 1/2 will be thicker at the top. That's how the stuff was made! We have better manufacturing processes, now.

This makes me ask- "what else?"

I would question the use of this as a reference unless you are very careful about verification.

I hadn't read Bill Bryson before his 'Short History of Nearly Everything'. But one night while reading my iPaq's AvantGo update, Random House had a 'teaser' of the first chapter of this excellent read. I was hooked! Mr. Bryson starts out with a absolutely breathtaking description of how utterly large the universe is and breaks it down without a moment of mind-numbing scientific jargon. He entices the reader with simplistic examples that truly hit home, as in 'How small is an atom? Well the period at the end of this sentance contains, oh, a billion times a billion of them'. Now that's SIMPLE!
Whereas one would think that this book would either be too simplistic or too complex, Bryson's gift is to put it squarely in the middle. Stephen Hawking 'sort of' has that gift, but he can get WAY over my head in a hurry! Bryson doesn't do that, prefering to act as a wide-eyed curiosity seeker simply trying to find the truth. He does that superlatively in this book. Never overly complex, yet never pandering to the point you'd think it was written for teenagers, it is breathtaking to read some of the salient points he unfolds for the reader. Such as the temperamental nature of geology, the dangers of runaway chemistry without concern and all the time giving you a behind-the-scenes mini-biography of scientists that have simply languished from the public eye.
The single thing I can say even SLIGHTLY negative is that the book is just plain heavy; I like to read in bed and this one is an arm burner. When it comes out in paperback, I'm buying it again, just so I can re-read it. It's that good.

I'm really appalled at this book. Here is an author that promises a short history of science and instead gives us anecdotal evidence of scientists' foibles and clear evidence of his own misunderstanding of the subject matter. Truly a waste.

This is an enjoyable book to read, but not a deep one. As always, Bryson's prose is crisp and engaging, and I'm willing to attribute the occasional garbled prose to the typesetters rather than the author. However, Bryson doesn't really deliver on the tantalizing promise of his preface: to explain how it is that scientists have actually figured out their most remarkable discoveries.

On the positive side, this is an easy-to-read general overview of the current scientific knowledge about everything from subatomic particles to evolutionary biology to plate techtonics to astrophysics. Getting all that into one book is an impressive accomplishment. Necessarily, none of the topics are treated in depth. This book certainly doesn't replace books like McPhee's on geology or Gould's on evolution for the general reader in delving into the meat of the subjects.

Perhaps the best parts of this book are the explanations of how problems or discoveries in one science affect thinking in others, often in fascinating, unpredictable ways. For this alone the book is worthwhile. There is a sense of momentum throughout the book, instead of a mere series of short articles about one science, then another.

On the negative side, Bryson overuses two favorite riffs for moving the stories along: colorful analogies to convey the relative size of extremely small or extremely large things, and humorous anecdotes about the eccentricities of individual scientists. These tics combined with the generally brisk, not-very-deep presentations sometimes make reading this book feel diconcertingly like reading an airline magazine.

People with any sort of scientific background would likely find this book pointless. It probably wouldn't be a good gift for your scientifically gifted niece, but might be enjoyed by your poetically inclined nephew.

Bryson has written a book on the historical development of science that reads as easily as a crime story. However it is too obvious that the author has not any knowledge of physics. A comic work for physicist. For all others: don't take it too serious.

Bill Bryson's 500+ page book `A Short History of Nearly Everything,' is neither short nor a history of everything.
Like his travel books, Bryson manages to get so bogged down relating the minutiae of background specifics associated with his observations that he misses the larger connection of time and place.
Bryson ignores many of the great correlations of modern discovery; from the development of time pieces and it's affect on sailing and reckoning longitude to the interconnection of the late renaissance to the machine age; so many antecedents of modern industrial and political evolution are glossed over as to make this more of a breezy observation than the dedicated research tome Bryson seems to want to emulate.
The most interesting (and best reading) in the book are his references to the great naturalist Steven Jay Gould or his rusty reconstruction of Darwin.
Unlike James Burke' The Day the Universe Changed' or Lewis Thomas', `The Medusa and the Snail' or even Stephan Hawkins's dense volume; ` A History of the Universe', this book offers little in the way of insightful passages on natural or political history.
If you like a book that fills your mind with a profusion of fascinating facts and well-written analogies, explaining abstract natural principles, stock your bookshelves with Gould, Thomas, Hawkins or Burke; Bryson reads like a chatty essayist in their presence.

Some of the other reviews here seem a little too critical - "for pre-school kids" is plain irrational loftiness. It's true that the science here shines more with anecdotal warmth than academic rigour, but it does achieve what Bryson set out to do -- to give the general public some background in certain scienific fields, and more importantly perhaps, to capture their attention with colourful, engaging writing. In no way does it promise scientific depth; as another reviewer pointed out, this is easily seen from the title worded to attract a wider readership, therefore the critcisms of "leave science to the scientists" and "too superficial to be informative" are undeserved. It's like asserting that capitalism has failed because it doesn't promote equality. I think Bryson has introduced non-scientists to paleontology, earth sciences and astronomy in a wonderful way that comes rarely to scientists -- in this way he is a missionary, and the pedants are unhelpfully running on a different vision.

I have read a number of Bill Bryson's books and have enjoyed them very much. I read "A Walk in the Woods" and laughed out loud on a long plane ride. I read "In a Sunburnt Country", too. One thing I like about Bill Bryson's writings is that he does research. His books are not just funny stories about far off lands. I was amazed at all the different subjects in this book. I even went out and purchased some of the books referenced in the footnotes.

Now, I have read other reviews that say that this book is not very comprehensive. True, very true. There was a lot of detail and people left out. But, if you are looking for something comprehensive on all the sciences and the history of these sciences, I think that you are fooling yourself. It just can't be put into one book. In my humble opinion, this book was a good introduction to a lot of the sciences and how they came into being. I goes into depth here and there. And, it provides notes and references if you want to pursue the subjects on your own.

This was a big book. But, I wish it had been longer. I was disappointed when the book was drawling to a close. (How many miles did you travel for this one, Bill?)

I also recommend Bill's very short book about Africa immediately after reading this book. You will find them somewhat related.

I also recommend the book "A Sense of Place" where Bill Bryson is interviewed. You get a little peek into Bill's life of being torn between America and England.

I am thinking of buying the illustrated version of this book, even thought it looked like a text book. I am not sure whether or not the photos and illustrations would help the written word or not. There is something to be said about using your imagination while reading a book - even if it is about real subjects and the sciences.

p.s. - I think my favorite part of this book was the meteor crater found in Manson, Iowa.

I am a busy physician, but darn if I didn't read this book in 4 days--it was that interesting to me. I remember most of the relevant topics from college science classes, but not having read anything about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in the last 15 years, it was good to see a basic exploration of it, and many other important scientific dogma, again. The things I didn't know about geology and meteorology were extremely enlightening. Some of the criticism directed at Bryson for not being comprehensive enough is simply undeserved--of course it CANNOT be anything but a "short", "history". Doesn't anyone remember college chemistry and physics classes and the SEMESTERS put in covering only the basics? Entire textbooks can and have been written on physics, not to mention each of its subdivisions, alone! Give Bryson a break already. It is not written for physicists/cosmologists/geologists/etc... It is written for laypeople, at a level they can understand with a little effort. To criticize him for putting the zeroes in a large (or small, as the case may be) number instead of scientific notation is absurd. And arrogant. Most people, tragically, have not heard of any of these topics, and take it from me--I deal with regular everyday people all day long--the less jargon you use the better you communicate, and I do believe that is the goal of any good book. I for one greatly enjoyed a little background on the men and women who names I recognize as important figures in science over the years. This book will make you think, if you like to ponder things and their meanings. If more science writers wrote like Bryson, science would definitely be more accesible to the average, pleasant but scientifically illiterate, person.

The books title is a bit misleading since it covers only a few topics that are essentially important in history, but hey it's just a title supposed to draw attention. It draw mine, since I bought this book out of a mood, just strowling having nothing specific on my mind.

Nevertheless is covers many of the most interesting scientific events. Usually that interest ends fast in boredom if you dare to find out more about the topic and try to get into the details. That is what the author tried to change. Offering an easy access to complicating issues to the average educated, without stressing the pleasant experience of "understanding while being entertained" with to much input.This book really reads like a good story while private, sometimes weird insides of science characters help to make this dry material come more alive. Throughout this book he adds his very charismatic humour to dry science and comes up with tasty pieces of knowledge that leaves you right form the start begging for more. Sometimes being so fascinated with his outlays on a topic, I got so motivated to go on and eager to dig deeper into it. Unfortunately he didn't take me there, but that was not his intention from the start. This book is definately a book you want to give to your school children. More I wish I had this book already when I was that age, it surely would have left me with more interest on those subjects. Picturing science as a challenging adventure through time.

Myself being a native german and not a native english speaker, I found the book easy to read and to understand. What got very obvious to me though is the authors bond with american history. This is one thing I noticed in many late american writings, which is sometimes just misleading. This book is in many cases too focused on american point of views and may be because of the authors limited scources while preparing this book. Lucklily that is already the only backdraw of his work. Everything else this book provided is far more than I expected. If you're planning a weekend trip into science while having the comfortable feeling of watching an entertaining saturday night movie, this book is definately my recommendation. Thanks Mr. Bryson, I will pass this on to my good friends.

Let me make it clear; I am not a paid up member of the Bill Bryson fan club. If anything, there was a slight prejudice against him before opening the pages, simple because he is not `my type of author'. So the book was approached because of the subject matter, rather than because of the author. I also did not know what to find herein, and expected something of the origins of, say, scissors, sowing machines and sailing. In that I was disappointed.

However, that small disappointment was far outweighed by awe as page after page opened before me. The breadth of knowledge and understanding displayed is breathtaking. It also opened my eyes to the scale of change in scientific advance in the last 40 years. Some things I encountered at school (e.g. tectonic plate movement) indicate that teachers were more on the ball than I realised at the time.

The story line is many and varied, and some individuals occur in different parts, tens or hundreds of pages apart. The main narrative thrust of particular chapters is broken up with lots of interesting little facts, hidden away, and some personal glimpses in the lives of the individuals concerned. An example of this is the origin of the Mason-Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which became an ideological divide in the American Civil War, separating the free North from the slave-espousing South.

At times the tone is a little frivolous, not paying much homage to some individual heroes of mine (perhaps Euclid, Newton, Lavoisier, but your exalted individuals may be different to mine). However, from the reading I actually understood something of the periodic table of chemistry for the first time. It is also a history of what is known, so thoughts and beliefs are not covered, nor is the history and development of mathematics or medicine. But it over 600 pages, the subject matter had to stop somewhere.

As an introduction to much that matters in the physical world, it is both long overdue, and will be a standard for some time to come. Bryson obviously undertook extensive research and had access to some outstanding people (look at the list of credits at the start, and the reading list at the end). Perhaps that was an excuse to indulge one of his passions, travelling. In the fullness of time, some facts may be shown to be incorrect as scientific knowledge advances (not that I am not speaking from knowledge here, but perhaps in particle physics). If so, I both salute you sand excuse you, Mr Bryson.

There needs to be a copy of this book available in every secondary school, and if you have a young teenage nephew or niece, give it as a present. This may force you to learn more yourself (to answer some of the hard questions that are bound to follow). But it could stir the imagination and inquisitive wonder of the next generation of science, who in themselves will push back the boundaries even further.

Peter Morgan, Bath, UK (morganp@supanet.com)

To begin with, this is not really a history book, nor is it a science book. A more accurate description of it would say that it's a history of science book. The author, Bill Bryson, an extensive traveler famous for his keen observation and engaging storytelling, attempts to take a journey through the history of the universe but ends up telling the story of how our scientists came to theorize about this history.

Science can be a very boring subject, and is manifestly so for Bill. To help himself go through it all he amuses himself with numerous anecdotes and interesting trivia about the scientists involved. He has a talent for digging up the interesting stories behind important discoveries and popular theories of old times and of today. He's always on the lookout for fascinating facts and astonishing numbers even if they had little significance for the whole body of scientific knowledge or if they featured any practicality at all.

He starts the book by telling what we know about the beginning of the universe itself. The problem he stumbles upon, however, is that all we have are theories and very few, if any, facts. To maintain credibility, Bill explains how we came to conceive those theories. This book is a tribute to all the scientists forgotten by the public and especially those that are not even credited with their own achievements. He tells not only about the scientists' work, but he paints you profiles about their characters and recounts many of their entertaining and sometimes surprising anecdotes. Bill's style is very exciting and can make even the most boring stories seem interesting.

After describing the universe and how scientists arrived at what they know about how it became, Bill lands on Earth. Once again he talks about the features of our planet and how we came to learn about them. I found this chapter to be difficult to go through since it mainly chronicled the emergence and development of geology, one of the sciences that least interests me. Unsurprisingly, the lives of geologists aren't that interesting either.

Unfortunately, the book seems to lose coherence at this point. Once here you'll get the feeling that the author is overwhelmed with information and is trying to absorb it all at once. Just as we begin talking about Einstein's relativity we find ourselves discussing how we came to know about the Dinosaurs and their extinction. And while we're learning how to date paleontological findings we suddenly delve into a subatomic venture to encounter the quarks. And only after reaching all the way down to the core of the Earth and up to the highest point of the Earth's thermosphere that coherence is restored. But until then, disorientation was my prevailing sentiment.

The fourth part looks at life itself and how we think it began. We learn about how Darwin envisioned the evolution theory and how the world reacted to it. We find out what enhancements were introduced to it and what picture it depicts about life. Many questions are pondered such as how is life so perseverant and fragile all together, and what various hurdles it had to overcome to reach you and me.

This is a very enjoyable part not only because Bill seems to get over his fascination with the scientists and focus instead on the science itself, but because the story is told coherently and contemplatively. This part definitely makes up for the lousy reading that precedes it. Its only flaw is that it ends.

The book concludes on a reflective note. Bill cogitates about where do humans stand in the midst of all this. What is our role in this cosmological game? What do we mean to life itself? He ends the book by leaving you puzzled by the conundrum that although we might be the only beings able to observe life, yet our own ignorance and greed could very well be the main reason behind life's annihilation. We're not good for the job, nevertheless we might be all there is.

So in summary, this is not a book that will make you a scientists. After going through the hundreds of names and stories, all the unpronounceable terminologies and the expired theories, I assume that I'll hardly remember 20% of it all. So take this book for what it's worth. It's very entertaining all while being to some extent educating. If you're looking for a science reference or a more science-oriented history book, however, then this is not the book for you.

Also, if you are a fan of audio books then I highly recommend the abridged audio edition of this book . It is available on 4 tapes and the book is narrated by the author himself. It is informally divided into 5 minutes sections, which makes them very convenient to listen to in the car.

For someone who reads books by scientists and writers like Roger Penrose, Simon Winchester, and Paul Davies, this might be too basic for you, but if you're not a science stud and are looking for a good introduction, this book may be for you. Bryson has written a very entertaining, easy to understand, and informative book on many important topics in modern science, ranging from cosmology to biology to geology and others.

I won't try to go into any of the details of these subjects, since that would take too much time, but I would like to give you something of the flavor of Bryson's writing. One thing that was fun about the book is he often includes amusing and even scandalous stories and facts about the personal lives of these scientists. He refers to Edwin Hubble, the discoverer of the expanding universe, as a "large mass of ego" (which he was). After Hubble died, his wife refused to hold a funeral for him and his body was never seen after that.

Just before Hubble's discovery, Bryson mentions that an astronomer "...with the cheerily intergalactic name of Vesto Slipher," (who was actually from the Midwest) discovered the red shift of galaxies. An important amateur anatomist and paleontologist by the name of Richard Owen once claimed in a book that he was the professor of biology at the Government School of Mines. In reading the book, this came as a surprise to the famous biologist, Thomas Henry Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog"), since he was the one actually occupying the position.

Overall, a very well done, well written, entertaining, and even funny book about many of the most important subjects in modern science.

I think the reason this book won the Aventis and Descartes prizes is because the prize committees may have hoped the book could engage people who might otherwise read only travelogues, and interest them enough to read about cosmology and evolution. That is a worthy goal, but unfortunately the book's errors are too many and too distracting. If the book's website included a page for corrections, I could recommend it, but currently the closest is Wikipedia which only reports corrections that have already been published elsewhere.

An Amazon reviewer (Michael J. Edelman) noted the issue of inaccuracies, but was criticized for not providing specific examples, so I will provide two. I should note that, unlike some of the book's defenders, the author is completely unpretentious and acknowledges that his original manuscript included "many hundreds" (page xi) of errors that were corrected with the help of more learned reviewers. He adds, "Goodness knows how many other inky embarrassments may lurk in these pages yet...." Quite a few actually, but rather than call them "embarrassments" I suggest he should list corrections on his website. I will confine my examples to obvious errors of math and internal inconsistencies, and will leave the deeper scientific misunderstandings to experts.

On page 15, "seven one-thousandths.... Lower that value very slightly - from 0.007 per cent...." Bryson is off by two orders of magnitude: seven one-thousandths is 0.7%, and 0.007% is seven hundred-thousandths (7/100,000). The context is the narrow range of livable physics, so the specific order of magnitude might not matter to the light reader looking to be entertained by something "science-y," but it is jarring to the more literal reader hoping to learn about science.

On pages 20 and 21, "As for Pluto itself, nobody is quite sure how big it is.... If you set it down on top of the United States, it would cover not quite half the lower forty-eight states." Then, on page 22, "On a diagram of the solar system to scale, with the Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea...Pluto would be...about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn't be able to see it anyway." If you look at a picture of earth taken from space, with North America showing, you can see that North America would remain clearly visible even if you scaled the whole earth down to the size of a pea. Even the area of the American states east of the Mississippi River would remain visible to the naked eye. In contrast, a sphere of soil the size of a pea would typically hold millions of bacteria, each invisible. The sizes of peas and bacteria can vary, so I cannot calculate exactly how many orders of magnitude this error entails, but it is as jarring as the one on page 15.

The text starts on page 9, so that's at least two glaring inconsistencies in the first 13 pages. There might be more that I overlooked. If the first 13 pages are a representative sample, the 422-page text likely contains more than 60 errors of that type alone, not counting deeper scientific errors that others have reported but I might be unable to detect.

Everyone makes mistakes, but some authors and publishers are better than others at acknowledging them and making accurate information readily available. A print book cannot be recalled and updated readily, but it should go through better fact-checking before publication, and afterwards it is easy to publish a companion website with corrections. Unfortunately the website for this book lists only praise, and links to buy more copies of the book.

Bryson is a story-teller, most famous for travelogues that can be more about entertaining experiences than specific facts, and this book seems to be his travelogue through the world of science. That might explain the inattention to detail. His memoir of growing up in Des Moines, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," is much better because the candid hyperbole becomes part of the fun; he doesn't expect you actually to believe that anyone in his family really came from another planet.

I received this book as a gift, and have tried to read it, but I don't expect to finish because if my knowledge of science were good enough to catch all the errors I wouldn't need to read it, and as it is I don't want to spend that many hours becoming possibly more misinformed than I am. More recently, Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" covers much of the same ground better, is very readable and often entertaining, and is backed by his website with feedback from all quarters; Dawkins is an experienced science author, and his polemic includes more reliable science and has already earned more Amazon sales despite being published only last year. "A Short History of Nearly Everything" might make a less challenging gift, but the errors and lack of corrections unfortunately undermine its value.

This is the second book by Bill Bryson that I've read in the last year and I've decided he does a much better job of describing his experiences walking the Appalachian Trail.

In this case, he does a passable job of relating historical factoids about the history of various scientists and their role in science. But, he fails pretty badly when it comes to describing the science itself.

Specifically, he makes several statements that are simply, scientifically, false. The one that bothered me most was the claim that the oceans have higher elevations at their Western shores due to the centrifugal force of a spinning Earth (pg. 275). He follows with a horridly misapplied analogy of water sloshing in a tub that is dragged across the floor. This indicates such a fundamental misunderstanding of some pretty simple principles of physics that one is left to doubt any scientific assertions made in the book.

Writing a book about history and science, two things most people find boring at best, can't be easy. So it's understandable that he wanted to engage the reader with a sense of casual, accessible and sometimes humorous, familiarity. But his prosaic verbosity made me wonder if there was some kind of compensation for his lack of scientific prowess going on, or if he was simply paid by the word.

In the end, I was left with an increasingly dissatisfied feeling as I slogged through more and more of the book. It didn't help to find the aforementioned errors sprinkled along the way.

After three years of research, Bryson, who admits that he hardly knew anything about science, gives an overview of the history of scientific discovery, from the origins of the cosmos to the ascent of humans. He explains the concepts, theories, and experiments in terms that a generally educated reader can understand, and introduces readers to the personalities (and egos) as well as the science. The significance of this book is not in the details (which only the experts will really notice) but in the grand narrative he gives of the development of scientific disciplines. He gives you hooks on which to hang your intellectual hat. This book will make non-scientists want to read more about science.

Bryson is always a friendly and enjoyable read, and this is as amiable as any of his books. Probably there isn't a comparable current survey of science for the general reader that isn't a textbook, so I suppose I would recommend it for someone who didn't know anything about science at all. There's fun anecdotes about famous scientists which keeps the book lively.

Beyond that I can't really say I'd recommend it as a science book. The basics that he covers are so basic so as to be pretty much common knowldege. Anything more advanced than that and he just seems to either zone out, or worse, write down something that he imperfectly understands. Other people here have written about the errors, some of which are quite large, that were allowed to get printed here. On top of that,the way he covers a few subjects is heavily biased towards the alarmist. I wish he'd leant a bit more on the wonder of science rather than on "oh my god we're all going to die"-- he seemed a lot happier going on about diseases, for example, than he did about less scary and more beautiful biology. It's pretty typical of the tone of the book that the grand finale subject for the last chapter is... species extinction. Not that I don't think it's an important subject, but it just seemed to cap the general negativity of how he approached things.

I wish Asimov's much more wonder-ful and geeky introduction to science wasn't so outdated by now. After reading it as a child I lay awake all night daydreaming about becoming a scientist and discovering amazing new things... a child reading Bryson's book is likelier to lie awake worrying about global warming, asteroid impact, or superbacteria. *Sigh*.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by best-selling author Bill Bryson is an astounding, detailed account of, well, nearly everything. Bryson writes with such conviction that you have no trouble believing his incredible claims (examples: "Of the billions and billions of species of living things that have existed since the dawn of time, most - 99.99 percent - are no longer around." "Behaviorally modern human beings - that is, people who can speak and make art and organize complex activities - have existed for only about 0.0001 percent of Earth's history."). This is a book for people who, for some reason or another, do not really understand much of the comprehensive world of science. Bryson succeeds in removing much of the intimidation of science, leaving the reader appreciatory and amazed about the world around us and life in general.

Although this book covers the same topics as the same science textbooks you can find at every elementary and high school - the solar system, dinosaurs, atoms, etc. - it is essentially a novel. It is divided into six different parts ("Lost in the Cosmos", "The Size of the Earth", etc.), which are in turn divided into chapters ("How to Build a Universe, "Welcome to the Solar System", etc.). Each chapter examines a separate and significant part of our world.

Bryson starts out in the very beginning of everything, with the very first ounce of matter that expanded at incomprehensible rates to become our universe. He takes the reader on an exceedingly exciting and interesting journey through time, examining the worlds of biology, chemistry, paleontology, physics, astronomy, and evolution, gradually leading right to us. Bryson discusses the series of seemingly coincidental events that have transpired in our universe - without all of which this book - and indeed, life as we know it - simply would not be.

IF you don't know that a proton is smaller than a period on a book page...and IF you enjoy being in a 7th Grade science class being lectured to by a condescending blowhard... and IF you are dealing with insomnia, then this is the book for you.

I suppose it isn't the author's fault, as his information came from "trusted sources", but obviously his trusted sources were of a certain political bent - though I doubt it was mere coincidence.

Authors typically get their information from those who have an interest in spewing their own personal ideas with little regard to reality, and such was the case here. This becomes especially evident in the second half of the book where Bill is insistent that humanity is a pock-mark on evolution.

While much of what he says with regards to the destructive nature of mankind is true, his unspoken assertion that mankind has been malicious is readily evident and absolutely unjustified. Mankind was careless? Perhaps. Mankind was ignorant? Definitely. Makind has been malicious in it's intent? Definitely NOT. Call me an optimist, or a right-wing nut-job if you want if you feel that's what my belief makes me but I hold my fellow man in much higher esteem than this author does, and the self-loathing of his race is pathetic and insulting to me.

Especially when it comes the the greatest scientist of our time. Many of our greatest scientists were eccentric, but Bill's anecdotes of them sound like the insecure rumor mongerings of an english major who never did very well in chemistry. The truth of the matter is that in order to put themselves in positions where they could think outside of the box to make truly great discoveries, the great scientists of our time often lived outside of the box of socially acceptable behavior. Bill may exploit these behaviors for his own gratification, but I'm sure history will be far kinder to them than to Bill.

Bill Bryson doesn't know the difference between a volt and an electron volt. He doesn't know the difference between force, energy and power. He thinks (alas! along with Stephen Hawking) that "10 million million million..." is somehow more understandable than 10³⁷. So don't expect precise science here.

In the introduction, he says he'll tell us how scientists figured out all kinds of esoteric things: the age of the universe, the size of the universe, the mass of the earth. Then he forgets his promise; in the few cases where he makes the attempt, the details are too superficial to be informative.

But the anecdotes are fun. Anecdotes are _always_ the best part. It's just that, in keeping with the rest of the book, it might be prudent to regard the anecdotes as semi-fictional, rather than rigourously factual.

For me, this book was very disappointing. Rather than being a well-thought out book on science, it turned out to be a book report on the best-selling science books of the last twenty years. If one looks at the bibliography and the notes at the end, it becomes obvious that Bill Bryson gets most of his information from sources aimed at the general reader. I think one would be much better off reading the books in the bibliography that go into each subject in-depth and are written by specialists rather than getting this summary version.

Bryson also seems to have a fixation with all the ways nature can destroy our civilization.

It is rare that a non-fiction work, particularly one of science, captures the public imagination. It cetainly deserves all the kudos sent its way. It is reminscent of Dennis Overbye's "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos" (which the author quotes frequently) in its storytelling power and its ability to gather science and scientist under one roof. Cosmos focuses on cosmology whereas "A Short History" deals with, well, everything. It is not on the same plane as Daniel Boorstin's "The Discoveres" but then each author had a different agenda.

The book succeeds on three levels. Organization of material is truly brilliant. Leaping from such diverse subjects as techtonic plates to stars to quarks to evolution is difficult and can bog down into a boring recitation of facts. This is prevented by the introduction of the second outstanding feature: Biographies and histories. We read about the famous, the infamous and the not-so-famous. We learn the history behind a current theory and excellent, layman-level explanations.

The third feature is a rare one in a non-fiction work - humor. The language is quirky, almost idiomatic. It is always immensely simulating and pleasurable. The sheer mass of facts could fill a college lecture series for ten semesters. There is an audacity in the challenge the author undertakes that one can only admire. It is difficult to find a single fault with the book with the possible exception of a lack of drawings or pictures.

Still, the descriptions are so rich and imaginative that perhaps a picture would be redundant. A troubling thought occurred while reading that most Americans would not grasp 1/100 of the ideas discussed in this work nor would they care to try and learn. Therefore, we can only hope that Bryson continues the task of both educating and entertaining us.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is a superb book written by Bill Bryson. Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa during the year 1951. He moved to England in 1973, returned to the United States in 1995, and moved once again back to England in 2003. He currently lives in England near Wymondham, Norfolk, along with his wife, Cynthia, and his four children. Bill Bryson is more renowned for the travel books he has written, such as The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America and I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away.
The most significant strength of this book is how well it explains complex scientific principles and theories. Bryson provides an adequate easy-to-understand summary for subjects such as the Big Bang, quantum physics, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Bryson also intertwines humor with the facts to create a book that is fun to read. The weakest point of this book is that some of the knowledge that Bryson presents as facts are not true. The estimated distance to the star Betelgeuse is 427 light years, while Bryson suggested it as being 50,000 light years away. Bryson claimed that each human has up to 1 billion of Shakespeare's atoms in us, when that number is actually closer to 200 billion.
The author's intention in writing this book was to satisfy his curiosity and share his findings with the rest of the world. As a child, he learned facts such as how much the Earth weighed and how big it was, but he did not learn who came up with these facts. Bryson wanted to learn who discovered the answer to these mysteries and what method they used to figure out their results. He wanted to know how people figured out the dimensions of the earth and how people came up with plate tectonics.
Bryson fully accomplished and exceeded his goal. He not only presents interesting facts, but he provides who found out the information and how they found it, all the while throwing in humorous comments to keep the reader interested.

Voltaire once said of the Holy Roman Empire that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. I feel the same way about this book. It is not particularly short (weighing in at just under 600 pages), nor a history in the sense that most historians, including historians of science, would use the term.

As for "of everything", or even "of nearly everything", that can only be obvious hyperbole. I suspect that the phrase was included as a sly dig at some recent authors in the field of popular science whose works could be subtitled "A Short (or Long) History of a Remarkably Narrow and Specialised Area of Human Knowledge". Bill Bryson clearly has wider ambitions than that. He first made his name as a writer of travel books, and this is a travel book of a sort, a Cook's tour of science, taking in cosmology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, oceanography, biology, and palaeontology. He combines information about the current state of knowledge in these different sciences with a brief overview of the historical development of each. He does not have a scientific background himself but has obviously learnt a lot in the writing of this book; each chapter has been reviewed by an expert in the relevant field.

A feature of the book is that the author loves to regale his audiences with tales of the foibles and eccentricities of the great and the good of science. Thus we learn about the nineteenth-century anatomist-clergyman the Revd. William Buckland and his ambition to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; guests at his home were likely to be served baked guinea pig or battered mice. Isaac Newton once poked a needle into his own eye socket (motivated by scientific curiosity rather than masochism). The chemist Carl Scheele was in the habit of tasting a sample of every substance he was investigating, regardless of its toxicity, a habit which probably led to his early death. Linnaeus amused himself by giving plant genera sexually suggestive Latin names such as "Clitoria".

The motivation for telling these stories is presumably not just a love of idle gossip; they seem to have been designed to reassure the reader that scientists are not some alien race of super-intelligent boffins but human beings like any other. The book is designed to be both entertaining and informative, to combine characteristic Bryson humour with serious scientific information. Some of the author's own preoccupations come through clearly. The fact that the final chapter deals with extinctions, for example, seems to point to his "green" environmentalist beliefs. He clearly has no time for the Creationist fundamentalists who believe that the Book of Genesis is the only scientific or historical textbook anyone will ever need. (I note that he has taken some predictable flak from them on this board).

In my opinion the author succeeds better in entertaining his readers than in informing them. His style is a delight to read, being both witty and friendly. As far as information goes, however, I felt that the book was perhaps a little too ambitious in scope. It might not be a "history of nearly everything", but trying to cope with so many scientific disciplines between the covers of one book is a huge undertaking in itself. Although the result was certainly entertaining, I felt that at times it seemed a bit shallow, leaving me knowing everything about the personal habits of the great scientists but wanting to know much more about their contributions to science.

As a scientist (Ph.D., Chemistry) I am continually amazed at the general public's (including high government officials) seemingly complete ignorance and lack of interest in nature and the science of the world around us. This includes hot contemporary topics like global warming, intelligent design, and environmental concerns as well as more esoteric subjects such as the age of the universe, the weight of the earth, and the distance to the nearest stars.

Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a tour-de-force of science writing covering these (and many more) subjects (check the title) in a style that is breezy, absorbing, and chock full of good science. But don't let the good science part put you off. The story is told through the personalities, exploits, and sometimes misadventures, of many of the greatest minds of the last four hundred years. It is funny, informative, and a perfect addition to your summer reading list for the beach.

I'm a big Bryson fan and a big fan of popular science writing. I was therefore a little nervous when travel writer Bryson created a giant tome of popular science, especially given his mildly ambitious topic: Everything.

I need not have worried. Bryson has matured as a writer. He was funny years ago with books like "Neither here nor there", but with the "Short History" and "Sunburnt Country" he has become a truly great wordsmith. His descriptions and stories are startling clear and crisp, and his trademark wit just never misses anymore.

Finally, Bryson just plain gets it. Most popular science is a summarization of the work of real scientists which tends to be both dry and so specific that is unnapproachable not only by the layman but even by others in the field unless they are actively studying the exact aspect covered in the book or paper at hand. The task of the popularizer then is to convey the essential concept without becoming technically innaccurate or just plain misleading. Fine...we have masters of this art: Ferris, Dawkins, Greene, Gould, etc. Note however this list consists of scientists who happen to have a knack for writing and explaining (an obvious exception is Dennis Overbye who as far as a know is simply a journalist, but does the astrophysics popularization very nicely).

But Bryson? Well, I would say "Short History" is a popular summary of popular summaries. I have read many of the books Bryson draws on, and those popular accounts have already backed away from the mathematical language and precision of the original works. How then can Bryson fail but to "dumb down" the material. But he does. While not going deep, he pulls the threads together, tells the stories and does it all with his dry ironic tone. This is called writing...and Bryson has become a master. Though frankly, I can't help being impressed with how smart the man must be to have synthesized all these threads. I guess we know what he reads at night when he's on one of his trips.

To be clear, if you've read all the greats of popular science, you're unlikely to learn anything new from Bryson. But read this anyway! The sum is greater than the pieces of the whole, at least as stitched together by Bryson. And you probably won't stop grinning all the way through.

When I heard that Bill Bryson had written a book on science and the people behind major discoveries, I was highly skeptical. I knew BB though "The Lost Continent" and "I'm a Stranger Here Myelf" and I could not see how his wit, humor, and style could make a good science book. Then somebody I met happened to praise this book; so I bought it. WOW! Was I initially wrong! This book will make everybody including the worst students love science. Actually, it should be required reading in all high schools. Science teachers should use it to illustrate their lectures. Parents should read it to show their kids how science can be fascinating. Maybe if we do all this, we would have more students wanting to pursue a science career.

As the jacket says, this is not only a book about WHAT we know, but most importantly about HOW we know. And this is the HOW that makes this book fascinating. How do we know what atoms are made of? How do we know where we come from? How do we know what's in the center of the earth? For each question like this BB has made extensibve research and guide us into a compelling discovery experience.

It is also a book about WHO (the people behind the discoveries). BB'style is such that you can "see" them working in their lab or in the field. You feel like you are with them when they made their discoveries. And like in real life you will like some of them and do not like others.

The book covers five major domains of knowledge: 1) the universe, 2) the earth, 3) the atom, 4) life, and 5) the emergence of the human race. Each domain has been abundantly researched and is admirably presented. And if you want to know more there are 36 pages of notes and 10 pages of additional readings. Altogether there are 30 chapters and each chapter is ending in such a way that you cannot put the book down without wanting to know about the following chapter.

What a treat! Thank you Bill Dryson for having spent three years of your life to research and write such a treasure.

If you want an in-depth treatise on physics or chemistry or any of several other topics pick up a college textbook and knock yourself out. To borrow a much-cherished phrase from another one of Bryson's books, my "apprenticeship in the harsh milieu" of intellectual snobbery (made possible by an MS in aerospace engineering) has taught me that "experts" hate it when someone makes the "hard stuff" entertaining while refusing to bow in homage to those who *profess* to understand it.

If you want an extremely entertaining (yet nonfiction!) read on the history of some of the issues and discoveries most fundamental to our understanding of science and our very existence this book may just be one for you.

I am a big fan of Mr. Bryson. But I found this book to be tedious. His travel books are wonderful because of his insight, warmth, charm, wit, and irritability. But this feels like a book that he wrote based on books he's read. It doesn't really play into his strong suit - his ability to articulate his personal experience. I guess I just don't see what this book offered that I couldn't get elsewhere.

In all my years of schooling, I never had a science class that I liked. I was bored and confused in every single one of them. Reading this book was the first time in my life that science was interesting to me. While this book might not sound very interesting at first, it really is very fascinating. With his typical humor and wit, Bill Bryson has written a condensed history of why we are here and how it all came to be.

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