A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2003)
Bill Bryson is by no means an expert on most of the topics discussed in his book, but he has clearly researched and polled the world's leading authorities and summed it all up for us in this very readable and often humorous story of natural history, one of my favorite subjects. From the formation of the universe and our solar system, to plate tectonics and the elements, to cells and the rise of life and beyond, it reads much like a novel and is easily digestible in small portions. The book's introduction also contains what has become one of my favorite memorable quotes:
"Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you."
You can hardly help but feel pretty darn special in this universe.
"Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you."
You can hardly help but feel pretty darn special in this universe.
 | Rating: 5/5 Further reading: Bryson's homepage Bill Bryson (wiki) |