A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books, 2003, 544 pages, $27.50 (ISBN 0-7679-0817-1)
CELIA HENRY
The ambitious nature of Bill Bryson's most recent book is obvious from the title, which he audaciously calls "A Short History of Nearly Everything." The book marks a departure from his usual travel writing. Rather than tramping along the Appalachian Trail or through the Australian Outback, he instead takes his readers on an intellectual journey, a whirlwind tour of science.
In fewer than 500 pages (the notes and bibliography push the page count past 500), Bryson touches on topics across the spectrum of scientific disciplines--astronomy, physics, geology, paleontology, biology, and, yes, chemistry. Given the wide range of modern science and the limited space that Bryson has been given, nobody should be surprised that the coverage is superficial. However, such surface coverage is probably best for maintaining the attention of his target lay audience anyway.
Considering the centrality of chemistry, I was disappointed but not surprised at how few of the chapters are dedicated to the field. Out of 30 chapters, chemistry is at the center of only two--"Elemental Matters" and "The Mighty Atom"--and in one of those, chemists and physicists would probably come to fisticuffs over which discipline is really being highlighted. The more media-friendly topics of astronomy, geology, and biology receive much more extensive coverage. Of course, topics of chemical interest pop up in chapters that are focused on other areas.
As with many books about science written for a lay audience, Bryson spends more time talking about the people behind the science than the science itself. The level of detail is apparent in a parenthetical remark Bryson makes about the ordering of elements in the periodic table: "The actual, formal determinant in the ordering is something called their electron valences, for which you will have to enroll in night classes if you wish an understanding."
Bryson might not tell his readers about valence theory, but he is obviously bringing his trademark humor to bear in his attempt to capture the imaginations of readers. Bryson assumes little about his audience's level of scientific knowledge--with the possible exception of it being as limited as his was when he undertook this project.
"I didn't know what a proton was, or a protein, didn't know a quark from a quasar, didn't understand how geologists could look at a layer of rock on a canyon wall and tell you how old it was, didn't know anything really. I became gripped by a quiet, unwonted urge to know a little about these matters and to understand how people figured them out," he writes in the introduction.
In writing the book, Bryson devoted three years "to reading books and journals and finding saintly, patient experts prepared to answer a lot of outstandingly dumb questions. The idea was to see if it isn't possible to understand and appreciate--marvel at, enjoy even--the wonder and accomplishments of science at a level that isn't too technical or demanding, but isn't entirely superficial either."
Chemists aren't likely to learn anything about chemistry that they didn't already know, but they may find the book interesting for its peeks into their sibling scientific disciplines. If they find that they already know everything Bryson includes about those other disciplines, too, they should just read it for the sheer fun of Bryson's breezy style and humorous take on life and science.
