Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything Author: Bill Bryson Recommended by: Miss Rachel Yeung First, don’t be fooled by the book’s title. A Short History of Nearly Everything is not just another boring history book. Rather, it is about science. But, unlike any science textbooks you have ever read, this book looks at science from a fascinating perspective. You don’t have to be a science student to enjoy this book. In fact, the author, Bill Bryson, himself is not a scientist. Little had he known anything about science before writing this book as he did not enjoy his secondary school’s science lessons at all. One day, he had an urge to find out answers to questions that intrigue mankind since the beginning of humanity: “How did the universe start?”, “How did scientists find out how big the Earth is?”, “How have mankind become the way they are today?” etc. Determined to find out the answers, he decided to spend three years gorging on books and interviewing experts. His effort paid off handsomely. In this book, he uses a humorous way to explain various scientific phenomena without boring the readers with details that are too technical or too dry. Most of you know what an atom and a proton are. But, I guarantee that you haven’t seen a textbook that describes them like the way Bryson does in this book:

“A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this i can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, rather more than the number of seconds contained in half a million years. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.” Most importantly, this book is a vital supplement to your science education at secondary school. Due to time and resource constraints, seldom do we talk about science in a holistic manner at school. In the quest for answers to the questions above, Bryson takes his readers through different fields of science such as astronomy, particle physics, chemistry, paleontology, biology, geology. He explains arcane concepts like Big Bang, evolution in a way that even layman can understand. Very often, we harbor a romantic notion about the work of scientists. However, Bryson portrays a more realistic picture of scientists. He candidly talks about the blood, sweat and tears (both literally and figuratively speaking) that scientists gave, the idiosyncrasies of famous scientists like Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble and Issac Newton (Did you know that Newton once poked a needle through the pupil into his eyeball?) and the strifes between scientists. All in all, scientific literacy is a skill that must be possessed by everyone in the 21st century. That is why this book is a must-read for everyone.