A Short History of Nearly Everything

Those of you with long-term familiarity of my book backlog know that one of the most stubborn categories I've been unable to even attempt progress on, for years, has been "science books." It looks like August, 2011, was the last time I read one, which is both amazing and shocking to me. No matter - I'm back in the saddle now, at least for one post.

Bill Bryson has written a number of things I've read over the years. This is the sixth book of his I've finished, but only the first in the Back-Blogged era. The man is a talented author of all things nonfiction, from travel memoirs to autobiographies to popular science. A Short History of Nearly Everything is, in fact, more or less what its title suggests. It's only 500 pages long, yet it covers a whole lot of ground from the origins of the universe to our solar system to plate tectonics to the oceans and skies to bacteria and dinosaurs and cells and DNA and human evolution. Bryson spends about ten to twenty pages each on covering thirty or so topics in a neatly arranged and loosely organized manner that does indeed seem to cover nearly everything. The whole thing is very conversational and approachable. This is not, whatsoever, heavy science. In fact, if anything, I was often bored not by scientific detail but by all the historical anecdotes Bryson threw in there to liven things up for a general audience.

I started reading this book well over a year ago, but must have stopped abruptly at some point along the way for unknown reasons. (Once again, 2013 was just a terrible year for book reading on my end of the blog.) I can't think of any specific impetus that drove me to resume reading this book, so I'll just credit the Neil deGrasse Tyson Cosmos revival for rekindling a general interest in me for the history of science. Kudos!