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A review by planarlost
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
4.0
The book was fascinating, well-written, and made me chuckle on more than one occasion.
It's sometimes more a history of people in science than anything else, but the way the author moves seamlessly from topic to topic in a coherent fashion is enjoyable to read, as are the anecdotes. I've read that Bryson is occasionally loose with facts in other works, so I did fact-check periodically as I perused. Everything I happened to research was correct, either in the past or the present. That is not to say that the entire book is correct in every fact, but everything I personally reviewed was sound.
Some of the facts presented in this book, as noted on Wikipedia, are now outdated due to new discoveries in science since its publish. I give the book a 4/5 for this reason. I would give an updated version of this book a 5/5. It's closer to a 5/5 than a 3/5.
It's sometimes more a history of people in science than anything else, but the way the author moves seamlessly from topic to topic in a coherent fashion is enjoyable to read, as are the anecdotes. I've read that Bryson is occasionally loose with facts in other works, so I did fact-check periodically as I perused. Everything I happened to research was correct, either in the past or the present. That is not to say that the entire book is correct in every fact, but everything I personally reviewed was sound.
Some of the facts presented in this book, as noted on Wikipedia, are now outdated due to new discoveries in science since its publish. I give the book a 4/5 for this reason. I would give an updated version of this book a 5/5. It's closer to a 5/5 than a 3/5.