This is a pretty hefty book by Bill Bryson, but I really enjoyed reading it. Several critics of the book complain that Bill just skims over the surface of things and never really goes into any useful scientific/technical details. However, given the scope of the subject, I think Bill has done a really good job.
The book is a story of the evolution of man and our home, the Earth. Bill covers a plethora of subjects – anthropology, geology, zoology, botany, microbiology, chemistry and physics to name a few. The best part about the book was the revisting of various odds and ends and trivia that I knew from before, but never put them together or thought about them. We were taught so many things in school, that I just gobbled up as mere facts or theorems and never really put them in perspective with other things I knew in the context of bigger problems.
As I read the book, I learned to appreciate things I knew, but didn't realize. Things like how do we date fossils, or figure out the weight of the earth or how miraculous and incredibly complicated each cell of our body is. Bill takes us through an incredible journey, without boring even for a few pages.
Highly recommended.
3 Comments
do you still have the book?
@nikhil: its already overdue! I’ll be turning it in the library as soon as I reach SD. You can issue it then.
I tried to find this book in a couple of stores no sign of it any where :(
do you know which publishing house is it by any chance?
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[...] A short history of nearly everything, Bill Bryson: my review [...]
[...] I’ve mentioned this earlier, but I always seem fascinated by how we read so many things but understand so few of them; and later when it finally dawns upon us, its such a good feeling of revelation and exhiliration. As I was reading through A short history of nearly everything and Discovery of India, I just suddenly realized (and both books point this out) how some very metaphysical concepts such as re-incarnation and aatma might have a grounding in science. [...]