Bill Bryson makes science simple (A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson)

Member Name: gillyman

Product:	A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Date:	03/08/03 (136 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bryson returns to his best, The best and funniest science book you are ever likely to read

Disadvantages: Only in hard back

Bloody typical! Having waited for Dooyoo to put up this category up at my request, I turn my back for 5 minutes and not only does someone beat me to writing the first review, they only go and get a crown for it!! Only one thing for it methinks - I'll simply have to write an even better review! The early bird may have got the worm but according to Bryson there are anywhere between 4,000 and 12,000 species of earthworm so surely there are enough for both of us to catch one?!

As many of you who have been reading my recent reviews will know, I feel that Bryson's writing has become a little jaded of late and I have been pleased to be able to introduce Tim Moore - hailed as "the new Bill Bryson" by reviewers who seem to share the same lack of imagination.

Bryson specialises in a couple of areas - firstly, and most succesfully, he has produced a number of travel books (Notes from a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, Down Under, Neither Here nor There) all of which are acutely observed with a tremendous amount of humour (even if Bryson is "gasp" American). Secondly he has turned his hand to the English language (Troublesome Words, Mother Tongue) - these are less interesting to the casual reader and really to get anything out of them you have to have an interest in the formation of language (which I do).

Bryson's new book is something of a departure from everything that he has written up until now. "A short history of nearly everything" may be a fairly flippant title (what else should we expect of Bryson?) but it does fairly well sum up what you are going to be reading. This is not a journey around a physical place, but a journey through time, examining how we got to where we are now.

Imagine that you had sat in your school science lessons and actually had a really interesting text book to read. Imagine that Professor Steven Hawking's "A brief history of time" was actually penetrabl
e to the average human mind. Chuck in a whole barrel of laughs and a one liner or sharply observed witticism to every paragraph and you're starting to see what Bryson is going to produce.

But how on earth can anyone make nuclear physics comprehensible let alone interesting? This is the challenge that awaits Bryson; taking a bunch of scientific concepts and translating them into simple and succinct ideas that Gillyonesciencegcseman can understand. And of course - if you can understand these concepts you can make yourself look intellectually superior to all around you!!

So how on earth did Bryson manage to embrace these concepts himself? Simple - he got together a stunning array of scientific brains "with heroic reserves of patience in answering one simple, endlessly repeated question: "I'm sorry, but can you explain that again?" He then acts as a sort of translator, putting the concepts into layman's terms and using extensive metaphors so that you and I can understand what the brightest minds of many generations could only scratch there heads in wonder at. Just as interestingly however, Bryson goes into the head scratchers, looking at who discovered what over the centuries, who thought they discovered things that weren't there, and who discovered things but didn't bother to tell anyone about them, leaving others to get the credit.

The book is broken up into several sections - they can actually be read as individual little chunks but you'll get the most out of it if you read it as a whole. Although it is quite a chunky looking book, about 100 pages are made up of references and the index and it works out at a not too huge 423 pages.

Bryson covers a vast amount of stuff in those pages however. Starting off right at the beginning of the Universe, we are given a run down of the current theories on how it was formed, ideas on quite how large (and expanding all the time0 we think it is and where the
earth figures in the overall scheme of things. If we already think we know how the Universe formed, how did the earth get to be in that precise spot, how did its continents form and what lived on them where?

Bryson catalogues the various important discoveries - Einstein gets the best part of a chapter to himself with a few cameos from other famous chappies but we still don't get to find out why if he's so clever could he not find a decent hairdresser. Want to know about fossils and dinosaurs? They're in here too, complete with theories on how they disappeared.

Although it is perfect for us in every respect, the planet is also exceedingly dangerous - all the various hazards which we face are looked at in some detail before Bryson spends the last 1/3rd of the book going into the formation of life from the most simple single celled beings all the way down the line to you and me.

Whilst it is fascinating to see just how much we have discovered about the world in which we live it is even more amazing to reflect on the considerable amount about which we don't have a clue. Likewise, what was accepted to be basic scientific fact in the past has been consigned to the waste bin of history so everything that we think we know today might prove at some time in the future to be incorrect.

Bryson has written a book that is at the same time extremely humouous and packed with useful information. This is a book for anyone who wants a lighthearted look at the world in which we live which is backed with serious fact. It is a sheer goldmine for lovers of trivial information with which to astound family and friends and will take pride of place as an amateur's reference book to things scientific.

A marvellous and endlessly fascinating book - go out and buy or borrow it - this is Bryson at the very top of his form.

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