Obviously, this is not about Wicked... even though that is what I am supposed to be reading... but I couldn't help it! The library finally got in a few new audiobooks and one of them was A Short History of Nearly Everything, so I listened to it at work. It made for good science-related listening, but man was it long. It really did cover the history of well... everything. It starts with the big bang (and the arguments for and against such a thing in the first place) and ends with the evolution of homo sapiens. Overall it was a well constructed basic tour of the history of science and a good description of some of the basic tenants of physics, astronomy and biology.
Unfortunately, I think a non-scientist would enjoy this book much more than I did. Also, it would probably help if I hadn't already read or listened to so many other history of science books. A lot of the information in this tome was old news to me, and I found myself zoning out a lot. I like Bill Bryson as a writer - I loved his book At Home. But I couldn't get into this one. I did like some of the chapters on astronomy and physics and the discussion of the early evolution of humanity was really interesting and new to me. However, the stuff on biology was too basic for my almost-PhD self and most of the information about early astronomy I had already heard before. Still, it was entertaining with lots of anecdotal stories about historic scientists and neat examples to understand cosmic phenomena.
So, I recommend this book heartily for the non-scientist. Also, if you want to get into the history of science, this would be a great place to start. 7 out of 10.
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