Synopsis: From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With his distinctive prose style and wit, Bryson succeeds admirably. Though A Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and covers th...

 

Review: I had read Bryson's "Down Under" when I was in Australia and as a Kiwi who has spent some time in the UK I was intrigued to see what he though of the place. However I was really disappointed with this book. There was a lack of encounters with locals, humourous moments or interesting background information unlike his other books.

The Island may be small (is it really?) but it is packed with different accents, cultures, weird facts, and nations! Bryson's smug, ignorant comments are everywhere, an example when he arrives in Edinburgh he states "it feels like a different country" well ten out of ten for young Master Bryson there...
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Review: Bill Bryson writes to entertain and I for one tremendously enjoyed reading this book. His way of wording things is really unique, e.g. in the chapter about the McCarthy era ('It was an especially wonderfull time to be a noisy moron.' p.146). This is a very serious and even scary topic especially because of the parallels with the America of today (although instead of communism we have terrorism). Due to the comic relief, however, things are put into perspective and one understands mechanisms. I would recommend the book to all paranoid, brain-washed people in the world. I even considered giving it to my teenaged English students until I got to the par...