I have not read anything by Bryson before, but he is apparently well-regarded as a travel writer. So in a strange way it is not surprising to have him pen this book, which attempts to tell, in about 500 pages, the entire history of our universe, solar system, planet, and all life on it — mostly from the point of view of the science and scientists that have over the past several hundred years in particular helped us to understand the rather insignificant place that we occupy in an increasingly vast and strange universe. Instead of traveling in place, Bryson takes us on a whirlwind tour of time (our time), and the very wierd and tenuous journey of life on this planet, and our understanding of it.

I like reading popular science and “history of ideas” books. While this is Bryson’s first attempt at science writing, I think it is quite successful, and Bryson is above all else a masterful stylist and humorist. In fact I suspect that it really takes a non-scientist to understand the story behind the science, and tell it in a way that preserves both the factual essence of the science and the human stories that always exist just under the covers of scientific activity. What you come away with most strongly is a sense of how utterly wrong (and confident in our wrongness) we have been about our understanding of the world, and how amazingly unpopular most of the correct (as far as we understand them) ideas have been when first proposed. Or, as Richard Feynman famously said: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.” Bryson draws upon some 250 “experts” in the reading that supports this book.

Although those literate in the sciences will probably find little new here, Bryson provides an extraordinary wealth of anecdote (for example, the rarest element on Earth is Francium [Fr] according to Bryson’s source who suggests that only twenty francium atoms exist in the earth at any given time [although a quick Google search suggests that Astatine [At] may be rarer, but there is still something like an ounce of Astatine extant in the earth’s crust at any given time]. Or the story of the Yellowstone park employees who went “hot-potting” in the warm pools at the park, and having left their flashlight behind, took a leap of faith right into a boiling pool, which none survived.

Many of Bryson’s quips are laugh-out-loud funny, particularly in the first two-thirds of the book. He tells about Thomas Midgley, Jr., an Ohio inventor with a penchant for inventing things with the most regrettably noxious side-effects. Midgely became famous as the inventor of leaded gasoline, which reduced engine knock, and in the process helped deliver tons and tons of lead into the environment and human nervous systems. Bryson writes:

Buoyed by the success of leaded gasoline, Midgely now turned to another technological problem of the age, refrigerators. [...] Midgley set out to create a gas that was stable, nonflammable, noncorrosive, and safe to breathe. With an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny, he invented chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs [..] which may ultimately prove to be just about the worst invention of the twentieth century.

Midgley never knew this because he died long before anyone realized how destructive CFCs were. His death itself was memorably unusual. After becoming crippled with polio, Midgley invented a contraption involving a series of motorized pulleys that automatically raised or turned him in bed. In 1944, he became entangled in the cords as the machine went into action and was strangled.

If you’re a fan of good science writing and enjoy dry, Python-esque humour, then you may enjoy Bryson’s foray into explaining just about everything there is.