A Short History Of Nearly Everything By: Bill Bryson
Year: 2003
Genre: Popular Science
If you have absolutely no idea how the world was made, what the universe is made of, or how humans came to be the dominant species, then you either don't care, or you've found science books too impenetrable to get any sense out of.
So, in steps Bill Bryson, a man who has previously written travel and language books. I like his writing, but there's a certain immaturity about his travel books that doesn't appeal anymore. Perhaps it's because I started reading them when I was very young.
He writes about the history of the world, the universe, life on earth. He writes about things I could never get my head round in school, like atomic weight, and he does it with verve. He does it with STYLE. He makes it understandable, without dumbing down. It is nigh impossible to dumb down particle physics, and even harder to understand it if you're inept like me, but he manages to tread the line between both and suddenly, the scope and scale of the world is brought into sharp focus. And it's just a little bit terrifying.
This book easily hits my top 10 non fiction, if not my top 10 of ALL books ever. I look forward to starting his history of domesticity tommorow!
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