Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

This hefty book - suggested to me by my sister-in-law - begins with a discussion of the current theory of the beginning of the universe, continues through the formative years of the solar system, the nuclear age (Somewhat out of chronological order, but it fits in context), a long discussion of the origins of life, and finally the path to humans and the way in which we're destroying the things around us.

I think I'll spend some more time on that last part. Throughout this book, Bryson leads you to believe that the world could end at any second. If it isn't the instability of atoms, or the probability that a meteor will strike at any moment, it is the delicate balance of the ecosystem, the fact that earthquakes could destroy us at any moment, or the harm that we, as humans and caretakers of the planet, are inflicting upon the world and, ultimately, ourselves.

In general, this was a very good book. Long, but good. Given the breadth indicated by the title, I suppose it should be a lot longer, but this 545-page mammoth of a book is still formidable (I'm including the 65 pages of notes, bibliography, and index since, if you tend to travel with a book as I do, you have to haul all of those pages around, too!). Bryson's writing style is very good. He writes to be understood but still manages to get into some detail. The section near the end about the origins of humans is distractingly technical as he goes into great detail about the difference between all of the homo-this-and-thatus and how it is different from homo-I-don't-careus. It was like reading the "begats" in the Bible. Other than that criticism, however, it was both entertaining and educational, at some times actually made me laugh out loud, and at others take serious stock of my life and the world around me.

In the end, it took me about four weeks to get through this book (About 60 minutes per day, five days per week, or a total of about 20 hours). I really appreciate Bryson's wit and ability to find interesting things about people we always learn about in school. Did you know that Newton was a freaky hermit? Or that Rothschild weighed 300 pounds and still slept in the bed he had as a child in the nursery wing of his mansion? All of these ideas are organized in a very understandable, if not chronologically accurate way. At times I was frustrated that he seemed to bounce back and forth from one century to another and I would lose the chronology of many events. It seems to me that if this is a history of nearly everything, it should be chronological. In the end, however, I must say that I believe the book would have been harder to follow and potentially boring if it was organized by date instead of by concept.

All in all it's a good book if you have some time to spend on it and a strong back.