Book Review
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A Short History of Nearly EverythingMost compelling thought:"Thank goodness for atoms. [] To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune." (page 19) Buy this book for: People that enjoy an engrossing telling of whatever. Or people who are curious about science but who could never find that one book that says it all, or at least seems to. Bill Bryson Bill Bryson combines his warm sense of humor with journeys to places that never seem the same after. |
A brief review of:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
A history of everything should not be attempted by anyone in seriousness, and in jest only by Bill Bryson, "even though it isn't really. It couldn't be. But with luck by the time we finish it may feel as if it is."Some may indeed feel that Bryson's book truly covers (nearly) everything, but in reality, A Short History of Nearly Everything is a snapshot album of a small selection of scientists from a small selection of scientific fields. Every one of these fields should be studied for a decade to achieve some true insight, but Bill slams through the lot in the mere few years it took him to research and write his short history. The result is a book glazed with perpetual amazement about the actual science, and lean-back-and-enjoy anecdotes and Bill's unequaled descriptions of characters.
Bryson's history of nearly everything (or the story of how we got here) ends with the arrival of Homo Sapiens, and that's a bit dissatisfying. He spends not a word on the development of power structures and economy. Nothing on philosophy and religion. It's like ending the history of the automobile in Rudolf Diesel's tinker barn. But maybe all that is fuel for A Short History Of Nearly Everything Else.
Still, as is, Bill's book is a gem of a tome. It illustrates how big the universe is and how many interesting things are in it. It shows how many people are interested, how many perspectives this yields, and how much of the story we're still missing from our scientific records. At a point, the book's jolly tone dampens somewhat when Bill begins to unfold the dangers we are in (imminent earth quakes, pending pandemics, mass extinctions), but since there's nothing we can do, Bill shrugs and evokes the almighty Luck, which he continuously claims to be the great driving force behind all evolution, and the providential keeper of what it brought forth.
Bill Bryson's continuous wonder rarely distracts from the book's overall celebration of the vast intricacies of existence. The fact that we (Homo Sapiens) are here is a genuine miracle; somehow we got a hold of the winning ticket of the greatest raffle ever. The short history of why the universe brought forth such a ticket, and how it came to be ours, is apparently another story.
