“A Short History of Nearly Everything.”
I finished reading Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” about a month ago. The 500 page tome has been perched on the corner of my desk in this time, awaiting a blogged review. I’ve found myself reluctant to write about it, though, and I just figured out why: if I write about it, that means I’m done with it. I’ll have to return it to my mother, from whom I borrowed it, and it will be out of my life. This makes me sad.
As I’ve written, I am blessed with an insatiable desire to learn and cursed with a terrible memory. In order to compensate for this, I read at all times. If I need to walk down the hall to the bedroom and then back to the living room, I’ll look around for a book to read a half page of during the brief journey. I read while brushing my teeth. I read before getting out of bed in the morning. I read while writing blog entries. I read fiction, non-fiction, how-tos. When pressed, I’ll read the ingredients on shampoo bottles or candy bar wrappers. I read very fast, so I go through books faster than I can stock them. Need more input. Johnny 5 is alive.
Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” satisfied my desire to learn, fully, for a period of several weeks. I read every page slowly, sometimes twice. Somehow, in a mere 500 pages, he summarized all of the natural sciences and tied them all together. I now understand where quantum physics intersects with geology, where atmospheric sciences meets molecular biology, where evolutionary development influences psychology. There were a thousand data points in “A Short History” that I wanted to have etched on my permanent mental record. Cyanobacteria invented photosynthesis. Hipparion’s migration is explained by plate tectonics. Yellowstone has a huge, active volcano under it, and it’s due to erupt now. Nobody understands quantum theory, though it explains everything. Sadly, I now understand none of this, because a month has passed.
More than anything else, “A Short History” impressed upon me how tiny, insignificant, and utterly useless than mankind is in the scale of the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, even the planet. There are a hundred different ways that we could all be snuffed out in the next day, and it’s nothing more than sheer luck that we won’t be. (Or will we?) The universe has not come together mystically to allow us to exist; we are a byproduct of brief, transient circumstances, like a slime mold on a banana peel tossed from a car window. That’s not to belittle the human condition; on the contrary, I think it means that we’ve got to make the most of our limited time and circumstances.
This book was so good that I forgive Mr. Bryson for making fun of me in “A Walk in the Woods.” It’s so good that I think I may read it again. Now.
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