This is an immensely readable book with a truly monumental amount of information. While reading it, one might wish to remember all its content, but it's written in a way allowing the reader to pick up the volume and start reading at any point, according to his interests, though Bryson relays all subjects in captivating and available way, with a big dose of humor.

This is a weighty book - 600 pages - but Bryson's not joking. He really tries to cover everything, from the beginning of the universe and the nature of our solar system and planet, through biological evolution of our species and the effects of us being here, both on nature and other creatures. Needless to say, he does an extremely good job of captivating the reader's attention from the first page and has no difficulty laying out complex concepts in a way that every reader will understand. Also, aside from all the facts, the book is also full of trivia and anecdotes about the experiments and the scientists who performed them.

In the introduction, Bryson recalls his childhood and remembers how he was fascinated by the image of a cross-section of our planet, but at the same time put down by the nature of the book that contained it. The dry presentation of the facts, that were accompanied only by a set of exercies to test the gained knowledge, puzzled him. How did these people know how our planet looks from the inside? And who exactly were they?
In his book, he accomplishes an important thing, one of the most important things - he presents the data while at the same time never letting go of the terribly exciting feeling of discovery, and presenting information about the discoverers themselves. It's obvious that he did a lot of research, but it's also obvious that these things fascinated him, and he grabs the reader's hand and runs headlong into the unexplored. And it is a world full of wonders.

If schoolteachers shared Bryson's joy and flair we might have ended up with a whole lot more of biologists, physicists, chemists and geologists. I don't know if it's the best book of it's kind, but it is certainly an achievement worth re-reading.

Something is very wrong with the world when this book is not required reading for high schoolers!

If we'd had this back when I was in high school, who knows what I would've done with my life! It certainly would have made things a lot less dreary.

It's just one of those books where you know, upon reading the very first page, that you're getting into something incredible !

I'm only 28 pages in and I'm already squirming in my seat with nerdy excitement.

This won't be the last of Bryson's books that I pick up, either.

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.