Reviewed by David Weiss

Bill Bryson’s latest book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, is neither short, nor a history, nor about nearly everything. Still, these minor quibbles shouldn’t put off anyone who’s enjoyed Bryson’s previous work—an oeuvre encompassing historical linguistics, travel writing, autobiography and lexicography, sometimes in a single volume—or is simply interested in learning about the workings of the natural world in plain, and invariably humorous, English.

As do other Bryson books, A Short History takes the author—and the reader—on a journey of discovery. This time Bryson sets out to explore not a language, a country, or a continent, but realms both larger and smaller: the universe, the gene, the atom. For, as it turns out, A Short History is Bryson’s attempt to explain (thanks to the indulgence of some of the world’s leading scholars and researchers, whom the author spent three years haranguing) how “nearly everything” important in science works. In 30 short-ish chapters, Bryson tackles the basics of (nearly) everything from astronomy to genetics, from geology to particle physics, and from biology to seismology.

While the topics Bryson takes on may seem dry to most readers of Etude—we’re not scientists; we’re writers, n’est-ce pas?—Bryson’s compelling combination of intellectual curiosity and ingratiating wit make even the murkiest of minutiae palatable, and the most eccentric of scientists attractive. (“It’s probably not a good idea to take too personal an interest in your microbes,” begins Bryson’s chapter on bacteriology. “Louis Pasteur became so preoccupied with them that he took to peering critically at every dish placed before him with a magnifying glass, a habit that presumably did not win him many repeat invitations to dinner.”)

That Bryson is not a scientist himself might strike some of Short History’s more scientifically inclined readers as problematic. I would argue, however, that the author’s naïveté (pre-Short History, that is) is precisely the source of his book’s appeal. Since Bryson makes it clear on every page that all this science stuff is practically as brand new to him as it is to us, the sense of wonder and excitement he brings to illuminating—and simplifying—its complexities is genuine and infectious.