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A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="A Short History of Nearly Everything" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4130HWHH8DL._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21.A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">A Short History of Nearly Everything</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7.Bill_Bryson">Bill Bryson</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9856239?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars [For the full text of this review, please check out <a target="_blank" href="http://upyetnotnorth.blogspot.com/2007/12/myopic-natural-history.html">my blog.</a>]
 
 A Short History of Nearly Everything, a recent release by the prolific travel writer Bill Bryson, is the fruit of three years of research into the cumulative discoveries of the scientific world, with the hope of re-presenting them in layman's terms to the general public. It began, as he tells in the introduction, during a flight over the Pacific, in which he was staring out the window of the jet down at that vast ocean and realized he knew nothing about it. At that point, he resolved to do something about it, and I rather enjoyed his efforts to remedy his ignorance.
 
 Coming from the pen of a man accustomed to pleasing his readers, the book manages to hold one's attention throughout long periods of academic history in which aristocratic gentlemen in powdery wigs debate with great vigor the suitability of certain botanical categories or the possibility that our noses evolved downward-pointing nostrils to ward off the hordes of contagion that dropped onto our planet from outer space. Scientific history is one long list of characters, some immediately recognizable, and many others whose names were forgotten as I turned the page; some were noble, others shady; some were possessed of a broad mastery of numerous disciplines, and others were content to whittle away at some miniscule corner of the scientific edifice with no apparent concern for what was transpiring around them. All seem driven by some desire for recognition; few seem to have received what they deserve. Each of them stands out in a remarkable way as beloved forebears of a rich and massive heritage.
 
 While the certainties of yesterday are almost always laughable, Bryson manages for the most part not to condescend when surveying the progress of human knowledge--a progress that has been slow and painful since the dawn of the modern scientific method. Consequently, the most consistent reaction this book produced in me was surprise. Of course, the "incomprehensibles" such as astronomical distances, the subatomic particles, the probabilities of life, and the age of the earth and of the universe never fail to impress; yet more than once I found myself swimming in a morass of incoherent hypotheses and data, only to be told by the author that my confusion was not unusual, as the experts themselves really had no idea, either. Apparently, the only thing more astounding than what we know about the universe is what we do not know, and how likely it is that some discovery will come along that will up-end whatever certainties the establishment operates upon. Bryson makes much of the conclusion of the scientific world at the turn of the twentieth century that very little additional investigation was necessary before a complete, airtight account of the universe would be well within its grasp.
 
 <a target="_blank" href="http://upyetnotnorth.blogspot.com/2007/12/myopic-natural-history.html">Continue reading...</a>
 
 
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Nick's review
rating:

recommended for: Whoever was lost in Sophomore Lab
status: Read in December, 2007

[For the full text of this review, please check out my blog.]

A Short History of Nearly Everything, a recent release by the prolific travel writer Bill Bryson, is the fruit of three years of research into the cumulative discoveries of the scientific world, with the hope of re-presenting them in layman's terms to the general public. It began, as he tells in the introduction, during a flight over the Pacific, in which he was staring out the window of the jet down at that vast ocean and realized he knew nothing about it. At that point, he resolved to do something about it, and I rather enjoyed his efforts to remedy his ignorance.

Coming from the pen of a man accustomed to pleasing his readers, the book manages to hold one's attention throughout long periods of academic history in which aristocratic gentlemen in powdery wigs debate with great vigor the suitability of certain botanical ...more [For the full text of this review, please check out my blog.]

A Short History of Nearly Everything, a recent release by the prolific travel writer Bill Bryson, is the fruit of three years of research into the cumulative discoveries of the scientific world, with the hope of re-presenting them in layman's terms to the general public. It began, as he tells in the introduction, during a flight over the Pacific, in which he was staring out the window of the jet down at that vast ocean and realized he knew nothing about it. At that point, he resolved to do something about it, and I rather enjoyed his efforts to remedy his ignorance.

Coming from the pen of a man accustomed to pleasing his readers, the book manages to hold one's attention throughout long periods of academic history in which aristocratic gentlemen in powdery wigs debate with great vigor the suitability of certain botanical categories or the possibility that our noses evolved downward-pointing nostrils to ward off the hordes of contagion that dropped onto our planet from outer space. Scientific history is one long list of characters, some immediately recognizable, and many others whose names were forgotten as I turned the page; some were noble, others shady; some were possessed of a broad mastery of numerous disciplines, and others were content to whittle away at some miniscule corner of the scientific edifice with no apparent concern for what was transpiring around them. All seem driven by some desire for recognition; few seem to have received what they deserve. Each of them stands out in a remarkable way as beloved forebears of a rich and massive heritage.

While the certainties of yesterday are almost always laughable, Bryson manages for the most part not to condescend when surveying the progress of human knowledge--a progress that has been slow and painful since the dawn of the modern scientific method. Consequently, the most consistent reaction this book produced in me was surprise. Of course, the "incomprehensibles" such as astronomical distances, the subatomic particles, the probabilities of life, and the age of the earth and of the universe never fail to impress; yet more than once I found myself swimming in a morass of incoherent hypotheses and data, only to be told by the author that my confusion was not unusual, as the experts themselves really had no idea, either. Apparently, the only thing more astounding than what we know about the universe is what we do not know, and how likely it is that some discovery will come along that will up-end whatever certainties the establishment operates upon. Bryson makes much of the conclusion of the scientific world at the turn of the twentieth century that very little additional investigation was necessary before a complete, airtight account of the universe would be well within its grasp.

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