A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson – 10⭐

I took this book with me during my summer holidays and it proved to be a hell of a beach read; I put it down on the sunlounger, jumped in the water, picked it up right away after getting out… It just kept calling me to read more, read more, read more.

The title is self-explanatory – it’s both a story about the formation of the universe, the planet, and of life, as well as a history of the scientists and the people involved in these discoveries. For anyone else who has a background or just an interest in science, some of these stories won’t be new, but some of the details will be. They’re a lot of fun to read either way. Note, however, that since the book is 20 years old, some ideas are obsolete, some theories have been updated and some research has filled in gaps mentioned throughout these pages.

The personal histories of the people involved in science were just as remarkable. Oscillating between silly and tragic, these people we often revere or consider to be superior to the common man often had massive egos, immature behaviour, rigid thinking and perverse secrets. Who knows how many details didn’t make the cut for this book.

It was also astonishing to realize how young most of science is (90% of theories, formulations, and proofs are no more than 150 years old). It’s even more stunning to see how much we don’t really know about… everything. I mean in the late 19th century people thought Physics was pretty much a closed subject, that’s until Maxwell, Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger and the rest came into the picture. And then some people started having odd hobbies like astronomy, geology, archaeology and so on, improvizing and creating these subjects as they went along. Every generation think they’re hot stuff, at the peak of civilization, close to understanding everything, only to then realize we’re very far away. And we’re just apes with better haircuts.

An absolutely wonder of a book, 500 pages of fun knowledge, a good start for understanding the emergence of matter, energy and life.

With all its flaws, this earns a spot as a “Desert Island pick”. 10⭐