BOOK REVIEW: [A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0739302949/mattorama) [](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767908171/mattorama) Boy, my streak of getting really, really good audiobooks continues unabated and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I'm a big science geek and science-history is one of my favorite subjects. I love the little stories and coincidences that led to some of the most important discoveries and inventions in history. The TV show Connections is one of my favorites series of all time for this very reason. So many things we take for granted wouldn't be here if things had happened just a tiny bit differently and if you look at it, Earth and all the life on it is no exception.

Bryson starts this book on that note, that we are all exceptionally lucky to be here. He then continues on to what really does amount to a short history of almost everything in science and how we discovered the world. He covers cosmology, physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and human evolution all the while not losing sight of the people who made it all happen.

Even if you’re not a “science person” I recommend this book. Bryson does a great job of explaining some very difficult subjects but as I said, it’s all really about the people. Did you know that the guy who put lead into gasoline also came up with using CFCs in aerosol products, thus giving us two of the most environmentally destructive products of the last century? I didn’t, before I read this book. There are a million little stories in the history of science and Bryson does a great job of highlighting some of them here. Between this book and his Dictionary of Troublesome Words, he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I’m going to end up buying this book for my shelf just so I can have it to reference and give out to people, which for me is one of the highest compliments I can give a book.