A Short History Cont. (TOW # 16)

     It is the late ninety's and STEM is all the rave. Author Bill Bryson must have picked up on this. A Short History Of Nearly Everything draws off the science of everything that surrounds the everyday human, and essentially gives a pretty well rounded spark notes of life as we know it. With the intention of drawing his reader in and causing an excitement around science Bryson serializes the creation of the earth. Although filled with a large amount of chemistry, physics and biology the book also dabbles in geology, meteorology, and even sociology. Covering events from the big bang to the Cambrian explosion to the extinction of the dodos. The book succeeds in both showing science at an incredibly microscopic and and personal level, as well as showing the grand insignificance of the human race and the great deal of chance that has played into our existence. This, i believe, ties back greatly to Bryson's purpose, to inspire interest in science and research, particularly in the hopes toward betterment and conservation efforts. I think Bryson best sums this up in his concluding paragraph of the whole book. "If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-- and by "we" i mean every living thing...  We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a good deal more than lucky breaks."
     In order to draw his audience in Bryson fills his book with factoids. Not always totally relevant but unfailingly interesting. Most of them show either the deeply personal level of science, or the unbelievable scope of it. For example, he tells us that in any given handful of soil there are 1 million plant yeasts two hundred thousand molds, ten thousand cryptozoa; or that one humans DNA spans 120 kilometers. This somehow makes the science more personal and potent. But to even further show its immense vastness he explains that as the universe expands it doesn't fill space, but creates it; or that we have only observed 1 trillionth of the universe. By showing the personal nature yet unimaginable size of the space and time, and show the shear lock that let us be a part of its beauty Bryson effectively advocates for conservation and research.