كتاب جيد ويفي بوعده
لكنني لم أستمتع به كثيرا

Well deserving of its popularity and praise, this book manages to be fun even though it contains a massive amount of information delivered at a rapid rate. The title is hyperbolic; this is an introduction to scientific building blocks that will give the reader a basic understanding about the world, our place within it, and of the history behind major scientific discoveries. Though it has the ability to make one feel overwhelmed, I think it has an equal potential to be a good kicking off point for further readings about science.

I loved this book! You don't have to be a scientist to enjoy A Short History of Nearly Everything as part of Bryson's motivation was to make science more accessible to Joe Public, but I have to say that as a scientist this book resonated deeply with me. Bryson delivers the most interesting facts of many of the greatest, and sometimes pretty obscure, men and women in the history of science. Since some scientists can be rather eccentric it makes for some very good stories! It's a remarkably easy read considering the complexity of some of the science and does a wonderful job of showing the evolution of science and the associated politics. This is a must read!!

n  “...we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.”n

Bryson departs from his usual warm and witty travelogues to deliver this warm and witty popular science book, which reads kind of like what high school science textbooks would read like if they were actually interesting and if someone wasn't forcing you to absorb them. Probably the most fun parts are the stories of endlessly bickering scientists and inventors as well as the literally insane amount of times that important scientific advancements or discoveries were overlooked, discarded, set aflame, forgotten, denounced, turned into paperweights, or otherwise pooh-poohed by the learned community at large. As might be expected in any popular science book written by someone who is a relative novice in the subject matter, inaccuracies may be found - there are lots of places online and even other GoodReads reviews where you can read about those - although whether they are "major" or "minor" is mostly a matter of perspective, and of course the fact that the book is now over 20 years old also means that it is more than 20 years out of date, but the book hits the spot for those readers looking for an enjoyable survey of scientific advancements and discoveries during the course of human history.

n  “Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?”n

Oh my gods, what a waste of perfectly good paper! I am flabbergasted that this has such consistently high reviews...

Three problems with this tripe:
1. falsity of the science (most blatantly around cosmology, but not limited to any one field) and misunderstanding of scientific principles;
2. a focus more on "biography" rather than on real "history";
3. trivial worthlessness of the information.

Number 1 is briefly chronicled below. Within just the first 20 pages or so, there are ridiculous factual errors and misrepresentations of scientific knowledge. Even in 2003 when the book was published, these errors would have been unforgivable. Where the bloody hell were the editors?! Apparently the author came out later to mention his "lack of scientific chops," or the like. How can a book about the history of science fuck up the science?!

Number 2 is just downright sad. Apparently the author felt that if he could spend about a page per scientist, he would make the material more interesting. No, man, I want science and history, not abbreviated and hackneyed biography. He doesn't even move smoothly between people... it's just a meandering of random scientific endeavors, somewhat brought into chronology.

Number 3 is a difficult criticism, because with this kind of book, it is hard to get away from misc. trivia. And I'll even acknowledge that I learned a lot of trivia... and that the book does a great job of showing us just how much we don't know. But as I reached page 360 and realized (for the fifth or so time) that this was info that I could get in a quick google search, I just couldn't do it anymore.

What a gods awful waste. What's more disappointing than the book though, is the overwhelming praise the book has gotten. I don't even want to sell this book back, but throw it away (and I thought I would never say something like that)! I'd rather have someone go slightly ignorant than have them be fed this mess of misinformation and dredge.


Below were reactions I had when reading was "in progress."

Start (05/08/11):
Okay, so the "approachable textbook"... does it live up to the hype? Every review I have seen is about how great this book is. Let's see.

So far, this book shows its 2003 date by providing currently inaccurate data; I also did not realize the author would assume zero scientific knowledge on the part of the reader... this could be interesting.

Finally, the Introduction is full of annoying straw men and non-sequitors that really make me wonder if the author has learned much about scientific inquiry at all. He really doesn't understand probability. Eh, I'm only on page 16. Let's see if this improves.

(05/09/11)
Oh, bloody frak. "In the long term, *gravity* may turn out to be a little too strong, and one day it may halt the expansion of the universe and bring it collapsing in upon itself, till it crushes itself down into another singularity... On the other hand it may be too weak and the universe will keeping racing away..." (emphasis mine) NOTHING about those statements is correct. Gravity has nothing to do with the expansion of spacetime. Ugh, I thought this book had fantastic reviews! The term he is talking about here is "dark energy," NOT gravity.

"Astronomers these days can do the most amazing things. If someone struck a match on the Moon, they could spot the flare."
... You have got to be fucking kidding me. A redox oxidation in a vacuum. Dude...

Oh my frak. He just lost all respect from me. "...even with the most conservative inputs [in the Drake equation] the number of advanced civilzations... always works out to be somewhere in the millions." Fucking no. Dude, how the hell did this even get published?!

In six units, the author gives us a wonderful survey of what we know or think we know about the universe and life on Earth. If you loved science as a subject in school but were daunted by the formulas or maths or taxonomies, this is the book you wish you’d had to get an idea about what the scientists and experts think about the natural world we live in and on, who we are and where we come from. An absolute joy to read from an author with huge capacities to make anything interesting and keep you fully engaged with little dashes of humor and fun.

(Unit names are my own)
1.tIt’s a Big Place
Down the road from me a little ways near the Jersey shore is where the echo of the Big Bang was first heard, winning the Nobel Prize for the young astronomers annoyed by the hiss interfering with their intended experiment on communications antennae. The single blinding pulse “from nothing, our universe begins” postulated as the singularity, is where we (and the book) begins, expanding out into the galaxies then coming back into the solar system and Earth.

2.tMen Like Measuring Things
How old the universe and the earth are, how big the earth is, how much it weighs, the temperatures of things, what shapes orbits are, what are elements or fossils, what tools or processes to use to measure whatever, how to beat (or beat down) the guys you don’t agree with (or stole from)…. We get the human (all too human) and the science side of things in this great section.

3.tDon’t Believe Your Eyes
“Disruption” is a thing that didn’t start with the Internet and tech companies. Bryson gives us a great example from physics when Michelson and Morley proved that luminiferous ether, “stable, invisible, weightless, frictionless”… “conceived by Descartes, embraced by Newton, and venerated by nearly everyone ever since…” was an “unfortunately wholly imaginary medium.” Then real disruption comes along with Einstein, Planck, relativity, quantum theory and how the atom and sub-atomic particles interact, to where Bohr remarked at a conference about a new theory “that the question was not whether it was crazy, but whether it was crazy enough.”

4.tBack on Planet Earth
Asteroids, volcanoes, geology, archeology, tectonics, and how they all relate (at least in how theories get developed and proved). Also plenty of reasons to fear Yellowstone Park.

5.tThat’s Life
The longest unit, “Life Itself” covers what we know about life on earth in its many variations, from single cell to complex lifeforms, how it rose, what it’s made of, what its purpose is, from the beginnings of Earth through many extinctions and ages, how Earth supports it and how hard it is to be sure of what we (think we) know.

6.tWe Haven’t Been Here That Long
Our second and a half of evolutionary time and place on the planet has given us an outsize chance of changing things. Talking about extinctions, Bryson writes, “We have been chosen, by fate or providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is. We may be all there is. It’s an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.” “…because we have been so careless about looking after things.” We got a lot of lucky breaks over zillions of years to make it here. We need to be better than just relying on lucky breaks to continue our survival. (My preachiness, not his.)

574 pages, 112 (additional) pages of Notes and Index, all very enjoyable.

First off, this is a huge departure from Bryson's breezy, excellent travel logs. Secondly, this book should be read with some frequency. It is so densely packed with valuable insight, and sound bites of discovery that you could not possibly absorb it all with one pass. This is my second time reading it and I plan on doing it again next year. The organizational structure is a wonderful series of loosely connected cameos covering several essential and enlightened discoveries of man. As an added bonus, the book actually attempts to pay off on the cheeky title. Bryson's light, common man’s writing style “scats” from universal, to global, to biological with a loosely constructed cause and effect outline. His books (thankfully, including this one) are all peppered with wit and charm and a heavy snatch of sarcasm. Further and maybe more importantly, he has the good sense to skip over heavy deep dives into mathematics, theories or anything at an ivy graduate level. I love this guy. I feel like he wrote this book for me and I hope he writes 10 more just like this. 10/4/07

I abhor cliches, but in honor of Bryson's incredible achievement I'll indulge in one. I might very well choose "A Short History" as the ONE book I'd choose over all others ...if ...I was stranded on the proverbial desert island. Bryson has created a true encyclopedic kaleidoscope. Imagine the fun he had writing this book as he allowed his mind to logically wormhole through and across time!

*3.5 stars *

The science we study in schools can be compared to the tasteless sugary ice cream shoved carelessly in a wet conical-biscuit by the village ice-cream vendor who comes every Tuesday on his bicycle. No wonder, the study becomes repetitive and fails to ignite the passion in us to go further in time. Few of us dare to pursue the study of science. And those who take it, they do not because it interests them, but it promises to give a good job. Very few of us really study science because it amuses us.

Bill Bryson blames this lack of interest in science to our school days, “It was as if [the textbook writer] wanted to keep the good stuff secret by making all of it soberly unfathomable.”
Probably that was the reason why he came with such a wonderful rough guide to science ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’. As if a chef decorating your plate with the sweetest creams carefully chosen from all parts of the world leaving you to wonder what to order more.

The book takes you from the gargantuan stars to subatomic particles in a matter of few pages. The journey form 10 raised to the power of 100 to 10 degraded to the power of -100 takes less than a minute. Traversing haphazardly from Cosmos to Bacteria, from Big Bang to Genetics,the book leaves the reader open mouthed. The book covers almost all branches of science, Space, Earth, Environmental, Life, Chemistry and Physics introducing us to the pioneers of each field.

One moment you will be lost in the cosmos. Next moment you will find yourself measuring the size of earth. You will burn in the fire below the earth’s surface before traveling backwards to the ice age. The book doesn’t claim to explain all. Neither it promises to elucidate the solved/unsolved mysteries. It just takes us in a time machine through all corners of world showing who is getting awestruck at that time by a sudden discovery of something unimaginable. Einstein, Newton, Hubble, Bohr, Avogadro, Planck, Maxwell, Darwin, Feynman. Along with their idiosyncrasies, it describes briefly the lives and wonders of the greatest personalities in the history of science in such fervour that you would gasp for more.

Being a gifted travelogue writer, Bill Bryson describes each occurring in such adroitness that not a single chapter will bore you. For example – instead of the text-bookish – ‘a million years ago in the world came the first human being,’ he writes, ‘if you fly backwards traveling one year per second it takes you half an hour to reach Christ’s birth and three weeks to reach the start of human race.’

Those who are in that mode of academics where they have to decide what to take up for their higher studies, should read this one and the path will be clear.

Bill Bryson shares his delight with such passion that I am sure it will rejuvenate your interest in science. Surely it did for me.

Battaglia per la Terra

Sono sempre stato convinto che non sia necessario utilizzare tante parole complicate per illustrare concetti complessi a chi non li conosce. Bisogna solo comprenderli bene prima di accingersi a spiegarli.
Ecco, Bill Bryson è uno che non solo ha capito bene i fenomeni che spiega, ma ha anche capito come comunicarceli efficacemente.
Con ironia, con aneddoti interessanti, con la capacità di sottolineare le cose più curiose e che destano curiosità riesce, in un libro che tutto è fuorché "breve", a coinvolgere nonostante i contenuti scientifici e spesso ostici.

Nozioni e concetti di alto livello ma comprensibili anche a chi non ha specifiche conoscenze scientifiche, che siano ragazzi o adulti, non importa.

E raccontando la scienza, come fosse davanti al camino davanti ai nipotini in ascolto, riesce a parlarci di atomi, di neutrini, della storia della Terra, di dinosauri, di glaciazioni, di tettonica, di vulcanologia, di evoluzione, di Darwin, di chimica, di biologia, di geologia, di terremoti e di stelle.

Semplice, chiaro, pratico, divertente. Concetti e fenomeni che avevo visto, ascoltato e letto tante volte, ma che rivisti tutti insieme prendono vita e luce nuova.

E c'è pure una morale, nel libro (sempre a caccia di messaggi e morali, io...). La vita dell'umanità come la conosciamo noi, se rapportata alla vita della Terra, ha una durata praticamente inesistente.

"Se immaginiamo di comprimere i quattromilacinquecento milioni di anni di storia della Terra in un normale giornata di 24 ore, la vita compare molto presto, intorno alle quattro del mattino, con l'emergere dei primi semplici organismi unicellulari. Poi, però, non fa altri progressi per le sedici ore successive. Fino alle otto e mezzo di sera la Terra non può mostrare all'universo che un'irrequieta pellicola di microbi. Poi, finalmente, compaiono le prime piante marine seguite, venti minuti dopo, dalle prime meduse e dall'enigmatica fauna di Ediacara scoperta da Reginald Sprigg in Australia. Alle nove e quattro minuti, i trilobiti irrompono sulla scena seguiti più o meno immediatamente dalle eleganti creature degli scisti di Burgess. Appena prima delle dieci, dal terreno cominciano a spuntare le piante. Subito dopo, quando rimangono solo due ore, compaiono le prime creature terrestri.
Grazie a una decina di minuti caratterizzati da un clima mite, alle dieci e ventiquattro la Terra è coperta dalle grandi foreste del Carbonifero dai cui residui deriva tutto il nostro carbone, e sono evidenti i primi insetti alati. I dinosauri arrancano sul palcoscenico un po' prima delle undici e tengono banco per circa tre quarti d'ora. Quando mancano ventuno minuti alla mezzanotte, si estinguono e comincia l'era dei mammiferi. Gli esseri umani compaiono un minuto e 17 secondi prima della mezzanotte. Su questa scala, tutta la nostra storia non coprirebbe che qualche secondo. Una vita umana, forse, neanche un istante."

Ebbene, in questo "brevissimo" periodo "magico" di vita (il famoso minuto e 17 secondi...) ci stiamo impegnando molto a distruggere tutto, con lo sfruttamento delle risorse, con l'inquinamento, con l'uso sconsiderato di prodotti nocivi.
Dobbiamo cercare di cambiare atteggiamento nei riguardi del nostro pianeta, cercando di conoscerlo (e il libro serve anche a quello) e di salvaguardarlo. Se non proprio per noi, almeno per i nostri discendenti.

آیا می‌دانستید ۱% برفکی که روی صفحه‌ی تلویزیونتان ظاهر می‌شود، مربوط به نوری است که حدود ۱۴ میلیارد سال پیش در لحظه‌ی مهبانگ (انفجار بزرگ) و آفرینش این جهان تولید شده است و تازه توانسته است راه طولانی مرز کیهان را تا زمین بپیماید و به ما برسد!؟
آیا می‌دانستید اگر آب بر خلاف تمام مایعات بر اثر جامد شدن (یخ زدن) حجمش افزایش نمی‌یافت، احتمالن زندگی بر روی کره‌ی زمین شکل نمی‌گرفت؟
آیا می‌دانستید فضای کیهان پر است از ملکول‌های پیچیده و آلی نظیر اسیدهای آمینه و قندها و مطمئنن سرچشمه‌ی این ملکول‌ها در این همه کهکشان، زمین کوچک ما نیست!
آیا می‌دانستید ما تنها موجودات هوشمند این جهان نیستیم و احتمالن پنج میلیون سیاره‌ی توانمندِ پرورش زندگیِ انسانی در همین کهکشان راه شیریِ خودمان وجود دارد؟
آیا می‌دانستید کیهان (کائنات) حدودن تهی از مادّه است و فاصله‌ی بین اجرام آسمانی خیلی بیشتر از حدّ تصوّر ماست؟ برای مثال قطرِ خود منظومه‌ی شمسی بیش از دو سال نوری (حدود دو تریلیون کیلومتر) است و میانگین فاصله‌ی سیّاره‌های حاوی موجودات هوشمند، حدود دویست سال نوری از هم؛ و احتمالن به همین دلیل است که هنوز ردّی از انسان‌هایی دیگر در کهکشان راه شیری به‌دست نیاورده‌ایم.
آیا می‌دانستید احتمالاً هنوز ۹۷% گیاهان و جانوران کره‌ی زمین را ندیده‌ایم و کشف نکرده‌ایم؟!
آیا می‌دانستید چه بسیار پیش آمده که کشف و اختراع یک دانشمند را نادیده گرفته‌اند و به نام دانشمندی دیگر ثبت کرده‌اند و دنیای حسادت‌ها و دشمنی‌های میان دانشمندان در کنار فداکاری‌ها و از جان گذشتگی‌های آن‌ها چه دگرگونی‌های پیش‌بینی نشده‌ای در تاریخ علم و پیشرفت بشر بر جای گذاشته است؟ اگر مادر مندلیف نبود، علم شیمی به کدام سو می‌رفت؟
آیا می‌دانستید…

This book explains everything from a little proton atom to Bing Bang's theory.

It tells more about popular science than the history of everything.

I found it interesting and also challenging to understand all the science jargon and theories.

For those who want to know more about our universal, I recommend you to read this book.

I like the history of Charles Darwin's life particularly and the discovery of his theory of evolution.