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.

Okay, so here's my Bill Bryson story. I was in The Gladstone, a public house not too far from this very keyboard, with my friend Yvonne, who will remain nameless. We had been imbibing more than freely. A guy approached our table and asked me in a sly surreptitious manner if I was him. Him who? Was I Bill Bryson? Now it is true that I bear a very slight resemblance



but you could also say that about Bjorn from Abba



and a zillion other white guys with beards and gently rounded fizzogs. Anyway, without missing a beat I said yes, I was him. So the guy immediately asked me if I'd sign two of his books, and before I could say "Come on mate, I'm not actually American, can't you bleedin well tell?" he had zapped out of the pub. Only to zap straight back with two hardbacks of Bill's deathless works. What could I do? He opened them up reverentially and told me one would be for him and one for his mother. Friends, I signed them - "Best wishes, your friend Bill Bryson". He was so grateful, so very very pleased. We drank up and got the hell out of there. I look back on this disgraceful incident and shudder. That's the last time I'm impersonating a famous author.


Short note on the book in question:

There was no way our Bill could write a gently humorous book about the history of all of science without sounding like a fairly smirky know-it-all, so that's what he does sound like, which can be just a trifle wearing. LOTS of good info in here, but it's like being forced to live on Indian takeaways and nothing else, great for a while and then GET ME A SANDWICH! Or like being stuck on a long airplane ride with a very garrolous and opinionated fellow who thinks he is the very model of the modern travelling companion, regaling you with insightful and humourous anecdotes by the bucketful while you're wondering if it would be so bad if you faked a heart attack and you could whisper to the flight attendant "I'm okay really but GET ME AWAY FROM THIS GUY!"

A short history of nearly everything

This is a remarkable accomplishment. From the author, of course, but also from me, to have read it. I'm not a scientist, so when I started reading this book, I expected that I would skip some parts. But I didn't ; I read every single page of this highly readable and enjoyable book.
I won't bother you with all the scientific stuff I learned. Instead, I compiled a top 5 list of the frightful fates of some scientists.

1. Max Planck (1858-1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose work on quantum theory won him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1918. Max Planck had to deal with many tragedies in his life. His beloved first wife, Marie, died at a young age in 1909, probably from TBC. They had four children (with his second wife Magda he had a fifth child Hermann). During the first world war, his son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914, while his other son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. His daughter Grete died in 1917 while giving birth to her first child, and two years later her twin sister Emma died the same way, after having married Grete's widower. In February 1944 his home in Berlin was completely destroyed by an air raid, annihilating all his scientific records and correspondence. In 1945, Erwin was sentenced to death by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof and executed, because of his participation in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in july 1944. His death destroyed much of Max Planck's will to live.
Tragic

2. Doctor Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889 – 1944) was an American mechanical engineer and chemist. He was a key figure in a team of chemists that developed the lead additive to gasoline (TEL) as well as some of the first CFCs. His work led to the release of large quantities of lead into the atmosphere as a result of the large-scale combustion of leaded gasoline all over the world. Thomas Midgley Jr. died three decades before the ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas effects of CFCs in the atmosphere became widely known. Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny". In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. This system was the eventual cause of his own death when he was entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55.
Horrible

3. Gideon Mantell (1790 – 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist and paleontologist. He and his wife discovered several large teeth of an Iguanodon in 1822, but they were dismissed as belonging to a fish or mammal or rhinoceros, by other scientist. Mantell was mocked by his peers, and especially sir Richard Owen (the coiner of the word "dinosaur") made his life a hell. Mantell became financially destitute and his wife left him in 1839. His son emigrated to New Zealand that same year, and his daughter died in 1840. In 1841 Mantell was the victim of a terrible carriage accident in London. Somehow he fell from his seat, became entangled in the reins and was dragged across the ground. Mantell suffered a debilitating spinal injury. He became bent, crippled and in constant pain. Richard Owen took advantage from this and tried to ruin Mantell's reputation as an important contributor to the science of paleontology. In fact, Owen even transferred claim of a number of discoveries from Mantell to himself. Mantell could no longer bear the pain of his spine and the burden of Owen’s hatred and on 10 November 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium and later lapsed into a coma. He died that afternoon. An anonymous obituary appeared shortly afterwards in the Literary Gazette, which denigrated Mantell’s achievements and claimed his scientific work was no more than mediocre at best – although anonymous, the style of the obituary quickly identified it as coming from Owen’s pen. Then, as a final act of indignity, Owen had a section of Mantell's spine removed and displayed his pickled spine in a jar in his museum.
Dreadful

4. Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German polar reseacher, geophysicist and meteorologist. Today he is most remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift by hypothesizing in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth. Wegener's fourth and last Greenland expedition was in 1930. The 14 participants under his leadership were to establish three permanent stations from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and year-round Arctic weather observations made. Success depended on enough provisions being transferred from West camp to Eismitte ("mid-ice") for two men to winter there, and this was a factor in the decision that led to his death. On 24 September, although the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by dog sled. During the journey, the temperature reached −60 °C (−76 °F) and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife without anesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On 19 October the remaining three members of the expedition reached Eismitte. There being only enough supplies for three at Eismitte, Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West camp. They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener had to use skis, but they never reached the camp: Wegener died and Villumsen was never seen again. Wegener died probably of a heart attack (Bill Bryson wrote he froze to death). Villumsen buried Wegener’s body in the snow and marked the grave with skis. Villumsen then resumed his journey, but did not complete it. His body was never found. In May 1931, after a search, Kurt Wegener discovered his brother’s grave. He and other expedition members built a pyramid-shaped mausoleum in the ice and snow, and Alfred Wegener’s body was laid to rest in it. The mausoleum has now, with the passing of time, been buried under Greenland’s ice and snow.
Terrible

5. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) was an American astronomer who is known for playing a vital role in the development of extragalactic astronomy. What became of Edwin Hubble after his death at his home on the 28th of September 1953, is a mystery. The whereabouts of his body were known only to his widow. It is not known whether he was buried or cremated or where his remains now lie. This secret his widow took to her own grave. His wife who adored him, devoted years of her life to writing an almost mythical account of her husband's life, much of which is evidently false.
Creepy

9/10

That was an Encyclopedia not a book!

Bryson has taken us in a journey from "Cosmos" till we reached our Planet "Earth", then went into micro-details of almost all beings ..till he ended with us: Humans!!

I'm thrilled by his knowledge & all the scientific facts & theories in this book. The only weak point would be the prolonged, unnecessary details sometimes ..

Must, must, must read.

If you enjoy history, and approachable science. From quantum mechanics to clouds, Bryson reviews what humans know and who made the discoveries, often with humorous behind the scenes tidbits.

Love, love, loved it.

“Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.”

*2020 Update:* I regularly list this book as one of my all time favorites. Thinking I might need to reread it one of these days and see if it is still as good as I remember.

This is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. There, I said it

Bryson's book combines the best qualities of science writers like Attenborough, Diamond, Durrell, and Wilson; presenting the information with the wit he is most known for. It is an amazing achievement to condense the entire base of human scientific knowledge into 478 pages, but Bryson has done it. I completely agree with Tim Flannery, who writes on the jacket that "all schools would be better places if it were the core science reader on the curriculum." I certainly would have gained much if I had read it when I was 15.

This is one of the few books that has truly challenged what I had previously held to be conventional wisdom (at least in my own mind). Two main changes have come about:

1. I had always been jealous of the "true" zoologists, such as Audubon and Darwin, who were around when the world was as yet unexplored, and discovering a species was as simple as being the first to walk into a patch of forest. I left science because the idea of being tied to a sterile lab held no interest for me. However, after reading Bryson's vignettes of early scientific/zoological exploration (much of which was both comic and tragic), I realize that those days weren't quite as idyllic as I had imagined.
2. Bryson does a "good" job of scaring the hell out of you by showing just how precarious our daily existence really is. I probably shouldn't say this, but it puts such problems as global climate change into context when you read how an eruption of the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park would wipe out most of the life on earth in a painfully slow manner; especially when Bryson describes how this eruption is overdue by 30, 000 years by historical average.

Combined with those two new impressions, I am left with the following conclusions, and a slightly rearranged outlook on life.

First off, it is clear that science benefits from a large degree of serendipity. We as a species/civilization have been lucky to have some truly great minds working on deciphering the way our world works. Some of these are household names [Newton, Halley, Einstein], some are not [Henry Cavendish, Rosalind Franklin]. However, as with everything that us humans put our hands on, this endeavor wasn't perfect. Egregious mistakes, pathological lying, childlike rivalries and tantrums - they all occurred. On balance, whether they helped or hurt the effort isn't clear. But what is clear is that our present level of understanding was by no means assured.

Secondly, the fact that life is so tenuous makes one a little more philosophical. Since I've finished the chapter about Yellowstone and similar catastrophic threats, I find myself asking "what if today is the day?" It can be rough when you get on the bus at the end of a particularly annoying workday, when the disagreements were petty and you didn't get much done, and think "is that what I did on the last day of my life?"

Thankfully, that attitude only lasted for a short while, until I was able to reframe it in a more productive way. Now I tell myself not to worry about big problems that might happen in the future, because I know that we will be hit by a meteor, we will experience a supervolcano eruption. It's best to just enjoy every day, doing what you really know to be what it is that you want to do. Does that mean that I won't recycle anymore, that I will leave the tap running while I brush my teeth? No! Because doing things to reduce my impact makes me feel good, that I'm thinking about society's needs - not just my own. It's what I want to do.

So, in an incredible way (that even Bill Bryson probably didn't predict) this book can really change your life.

*4.5 stars*

Pretty brilliant, almost required reading.

It took me over a month to listen, but the narrator is excellent and the content ranges from mildly engrossing to fascinating, depending on your areas of interest. I'd listen again and again.

Desde el momento que empecé este libro supe que iba a ser un 5 estrellas.

Tenía muchas ganas de escuchar algo de no ficción mientras hacía sudokus y esto fue perfecto. A mí este tipo de libros a veces se me hacen pesados a pesar de que me resulta interesantes, pero este nunca me aburrió. Tiene la una mezcla perfecta de historia, hechos interesantes e importantes, anécdotas interesantes e irrelevantes pero super entretenidas y un tono súper casual y fácil que te ayuda a entender conceptos que en realidad son súper complejos.
De todas maneras, recomiendo escuchar esto en audiolibro porque se lee más rápido y no necesitas darle tu atención 100%, lo que hace mucho más fácil que el libro no se vuelva pesado.
100% recomiendo, especialmente a las personas que les interesa leer este tipo de libros pero tienen miedo de no entender o que sea muy como un libro de colegio.

Good grief if I had even one textbook half this enthralling in high school, who knows what kind of impassioned -ologist I would have grown up to be. I hereby petition Bryson to re-write all curriculum on behalf of the history of the world.

I would run across things half-remembered from midterms and study guides and think, "You mean this is what they were talking about? You have got to be kidding me." It's never condescending, always a joy.

In fact, what I loved most is the acute, childlike sense of wonder seeping through the pages. How fantastic little we know about the world in which we live. All the great scientific leaps fallen through the cracks, all the billions of leaps that will never be made, every scientist who with an amiable grin shrugs to say, "I don't know. We don't know. Who has any idea?" The world is a magically baffling, enchanting place, and after nearly everything there is infinitesimally more.

يقول كامو في اسطوره سيزيف
كل المعرفة المتوفرة في الأرض لن تعطيني شيئا يؤكد يؤكد لي أن هذا العالم هو ملكا لي ، انت تصفه لي وتعلمني كيف أصنفه ، وتحصي قوانينه ، وأنا في ظمأ للمعرفة ، وانت تتناول كيفية سيره على حدة ، فيزداد أملي ، وفي المرحلة الأخيرة تعلمني أن هذا الكون العجيب المملوء بكل الالوان يمكن أن يقلص إلى ذرة ، والذرة نفسها يمكن أن تقلص إلى إلكترون ، وكل هذا حسن وانا في انتظار أن تستمر ، ولكنك تخبرني عن نظام كوني غير مرئي تنجذب فيه الالكترونات إلى نواة ، وانت تفسر لي العالم بالصورة ، و أدرك حينئذ انك تقلصت إلى حد الشعر ، وأنني لن أعرف ، وهل يتاح لي الوقت كي أستاء؟ ، لقد غيرت انت النظريات بحيث أن العلم الذي كان سيعلمني كل شيء انتهى إلى فرضية

A great book, with a little bit of everything.. Bill Bryson articulate it in a very familiar manner and its incredibly simple to read. The book offers different perspectives regarding science and evolution. The impact of religion on the history of modern science, however, has generated a great deal of debate every now and then but i ve learned from this piece .. a handful lessons and as a believer in a high power my self i find it very informative and insightful. There are parts in the book that are hard to swallow but that's the beauty of narration. It puts the study, research, findings and the facts to the table and the golden spoon is on our hand. Overall the book Ignify my curiosity to explore and attain more knowledge and adore science. There is a lot to take in and I recommend it for readers who wants to know more about modern science, thoughts and theories.

حقیقت مأیوس‌کننده‌ای که با خواندن برخی کتاب‌ها گریبان‌گیرم می‌شود این است که چگونه یک نظام مدون آموزشی و پژوهشی و همچنین شرایط متناسب جامعه، باعث می‌شود چهره‌ها، استعدادها و مسیرها برای تحقق یک کشف مهیا شوند. بسیاری از چهره‌ها از علاقه‌های جزئی به سمت اکتشافات بزرگ کشانده می‌شوند. از جمع‌آوری صدف و سنگریزه و گیاه به اکتشاف و چاپ مقاله و تحقیق می‌رسند. جالب است که اغلب این چهره‌ها نه نبوغ آن‌چنانی دارند و نه وجه تمایزی برجسته، تنها و تنها علاقه دارند و اشتیاق. چیزی که مردم این‌جا هم دارند. اما مسیرها به کجا می‌روند و چه شرایطی مهیا می‌شود، جواب سوال است. به‌قول فروغ اینجا راه‌ها ادامۀ خود را در تیرگی رها کردند... ما زمین و آسمان را تبدیل کردیم به دانشگاه، سر خیابان‌ها مقاله و پایان‌نامه می‌فروشیم. حراجِ هر روزه زده‌ایم به دانش و تولید دانش، با شعارهایی هزاران برابر بدتر. ما هر سال‌مان را با «شعار» شروع می‌کنیم، شعار دانش، شعار برتری، شعار پیشرفت، شعارِ عمل! و سالی که با شعار شروع می‌شود، نکو بودنش از بهارش پیداست!

امیدوارم روزی برسد که اشتیاقِ هر کسی {نه روابط و ضوابط و حتی نبوغ فردی} به تبحر در دانش و پژوهش برسد.