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Chemistry, Astronomy and Evolution, Oh My!
A textbook illustration of the Earth's interior jump-started Bill Bryson's curiosity about science as a child.
Unfortunately, the rest of that dry 1950s textbook dampened his blossoming fascination, as Bryson explains in his new book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Fortunately for us, that curiosity returned in full force three years ago and inspired Bryson to write a book that would answer many of his childhood scientific questions.
Although they were child's questions, they spurred complex answers that span a number of divergent scientific disciplines. As a result, the book's title is truly a description of its contents, addressing everything from basic chemistry to geophysics.
Thankfully, Bryson organizes these topics in a way far more intuitive and entertaining than the average high school textbook.
To begin with, he approaches his science from a storytelling standpoint. He said that in writing the book, he wanted to answer the question, "How do they know that?" and he does so quite admirably. He tells the stories of the scientists behind the discoveries, making them the main characters in his epic and involving the reader in their misadventures.
For example, he tells the story of Thomas Midgley, a misguided scientist who all but personified the phrase, "Good intentions pave the road to hell." In a decade, Midgley managed to create two of the most environmentally unfriendly inventions ever: leaded gasoline and CFCs. But Bryson also describes Midgley's personality quirks, such his strange death from one of his own inventions, a series of pulleys that raised and lowered his bed. Along the way, Bryson also teaches the reader about lead's toxicity and the destructiveness of CFCs on the ozone layer.
Fortunately, Bryson doesn't limit his character sketches to the past. He also profiles the Reverend Robert Evans, an Australian minister who is a genius at spotting ridiculously hard-to-find supernovae, or exploding stars.
In the second half of the book, Bryson switches more to natural history than the history of natural history, but manages to retain his sense of adventure and not lose the reader.
In part, Bryson keeps the reader engaged with his use of clear, lively language. Even while describing preposterously complex concepts such as superstring theory, he keeps the overly stilted "scientific" language to a minimum. Although the reader may not truly understand all of the ideas Bryson presents - in fact, many of them no one truly understands - they will at least have a handle on the basic concepts.
The description of superstring theory illustrates another of Bryson's strengths: his exceptional explanations of modern science's limits. Numerous times throughout the book he emphasizes how little scientists know about certain fields, such as oceanography. What scientists don't know is often just as important as what they do know, and it's encouraging and helpful to the reader to understand these limits.
Lastly, Bryson challenges the reader. Through detailed descriptions and illuminating metaphors, Bryson makes one think about the universe in a whole different way. In his chapter on the atom, he describes the idea that atoms are mostly empty space. Although any high school chemistry student knows this fact, Bryson puts it in context. He says that when a person sits in a chair, they are not actually on the chair, but hovering a hundred millionth of a centimeter above it, due to atoms' vast emptiness and electrical forces. Personally, I would have never made that connection. His explanation not only made me wonder at our strange world, but inspired me to look rather keenly at my own arm for a while as I contemplated how most of our bodies are nothing close to truly solid.
However, Bryson cannot take all of the credit for his lucid explanations, and does not even attempt to. He often picks and chooses his examples from a variety of science literature.
Although the quotes and illustrations he has chosen are excellent, it sometimes feels as if he relies too heavily on other sources. His constant citations tend to break up his writing style and seem rather awkward at times. Although many of the historical sources he quotes are needed, a few more personal interviews would have strengthened the book even more. The interviews he has - with a curator of mosses and an Australian geochemist, for instance - provide great portraits of both the quirky scientists themselves and the work they do.
Overall, Bryson has managed to write a book that both the scientist and non-scientist should enjoy and learn from, with neither left feeling patronized or confused
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