** spoiler alert ** Fitting in with the Bryson M.O. of saying to himself, "Gee, I wonder about..." then following that question with a book, this is a biography about a man about whom, as Bryson reminds us at least once on every page, there is known almost nothing. Yet somehow there are a complete 100-something pages that move briskly and thoroughly.

The bio covers what little is factually known about Shakespeare's birth, life, and [spoiler] death. Bryson comes at his subject as a sort of curator, rifling through what is known and inferred about Shakespeare as a man, allowing for detours into epistemological commentary. This becomes a great lens for taking on the larger Elizabethan & Jacobean Englands as a subject.

Before anything else, the book is entertaining. (Though in the interest of full disclosure, I am predisposed to think Bill Bryson would entertain even if writing about, say, mosses.) Many people like to call him "readable." I think this readability comes from his talent for choosing exactly the most perfectly efficient words to articulate a given thought. Also contributing is a general tone that drives forward.

The only petite gripe is how steadfast Bryson holds onto his position in the Was Shakespeare Really Shakespeare debate. But he supports his view, at least to my standards, adequately.

And finally, it just occured to me that Bill Bryson did indeed entertain me when he wrote about mosses: pages 427 - 429 in A Short History of Nearly Everything.