Submitted by eddycurrents on Wed, 04/14/2004 - 10:42am

Ok this isn't spec fiction, but man, what a great book. I'm a history buff and so I was intrigued, and Bryson's writing is so good I had to try it.

After reading A Walk in the Woods I was determined to read more of his stuff. That's another great book btw, especially if you are interested in hiking. I just happened to move to Virginia and do a few day hikes on the Appalachian Trail right when my sister sent me the book, so the serendipity was cosmic.

Anyway, in A Short History he focuses on science: basic physics and recent scientific history. This was okay because I'm a scientist (engineer to be precise) but I was hoping to learn more about societies and countries and wars and such. This book doesn't touch those.

The opening hooked me immediately, where he describes how tiny we are and how fleeting our lives are, and how much of a fluke it was that we even exist. His descriptions and prose are amazing and amusing. Then he moves on to physics.

In the middle to end of the book he moves on to recent scientific history, where brings up hundreds of obscure and fascinating tales about early scientists and presents them in a hilarious way.

Many of those stories stuck with me -- like the guy who crusaded to get lead removed from gasoline, and the company who was making millions worldwide putting lead in gasoline pulled political strings and ruined the man's career. He kept at it, and after decades of toil he won. He protected the health of everyone on Earth and no one knows his name (I don't remember it either) or his story (I remember that).