Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything

Reviewed by ELEANOR BLACK

In just over 400 pages Bill Bryson does what you always wished your secondary school science teacher would do: make science moreish and fun, even the gross bits.

In short order, he covers the Big Bang, extinction of the dinosaurs, discovery of the atom, the start of the ice age and a host of other - in his hands at least - fascinating turning points in Earth's history.

Best known for his lively travel writing, Bryson has deviated from script before. Having read one of his rather stolid, academic books on the English language, Made In America, and not much enjoyed it, I was relieved to find A Short History returns to the formula that makes his travel writing great: using charmingly oddball characters on which to hinge his argument. In this case, his oddballs help us through a swamp of impeccably researched scientific information which would otherwise be all but impenetrable to the average reader.

Here, lurking sadly in the lab, we meet a series of luckless scientists whose discoveries were ignored in their own time, or independently found by other scientists who got the credit.

Swedish pharmacist Karl Scheele, not formally trained in chemistry but naturally brilliant, is one of the more startling. He discovered eight elements for which he was uncredited, including oxygen and nitrogen, and first saw the potential commercial use of chlorine as a bleach, an application which made millions for other men. Owing to a weird habit of tasting everything he worked on - including mercury and hydrocyanic acid - Scheele died at his workbench in 1786, aged 43, surrounded by an array of toxic chemicals.

Sad, you think, but 19th-century amateur paleontologist Gideon Mantell, a doctor from Sussex, is surely the unluckiest scientist in history. His insatiable passion for fossils, which eventually filled his home from floorboard to rafter and sucked up every shilling from his country practice, bankrupted him. His wife left with their four children, and having lost his practice too, Mantell moved to London where he fell from a carriage, became tangled in the reins, was dragged underneath and trampled by the horses. His spine was twisted and irreparably damaged.

Meanwhile, his professional reputation was in tatters. A rival paleontologist, Richard Owen, who organised medical and anatomical collections for the Royal College of Surgeons of England, took credit for a number of Mantell's discoveries, erased others from the record, and ensured any attempts by the doctor to do original research were rejected. Heartbroken and in constant pain, Mantell took his life in 1852. His spine was sent to the RCS and, bizarrely, displayed in the college's Hunterian Museum where it remained until destroyed by a German bomb during the blitz.

Between the funny/tragic anecdotes, Bryson manages to weave a compelling story which takes us from the Earth's creation to the present day, where he leaves the reader worried for the future of the human race and the wonderful sphere we call home. If a giant earthquake doesn't do us in, he warns, our own mistreatment of the environment will.

Doubleday $59.95