Bill Bryson's "A Brief History of Nearly Everything"
Amazon Link
This book was exceptional. Bill Bryson spent 5 years investigating "How we know what we know" in science (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc etc). He's a non-technical person, and explains things very well and to the point. You get an idea just how crazy some scientists were (and probably still are.) Each chapter covers a somewhat different topic, but it all flows very well. It's basically a book on this history of science, something we never learned in school whatsoever.
I found his explanations of quantum physics much more enjoyable than Stephen Hawking's ramblings :)
I'd like to see if there exists a similar style book on the history of engineering ;)
posted by Medieval @ 11:31 a.m.
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hmm, sounds interesting. I'm always looking for additions to my reading list. I read Sphere about a month ago and it was good (though slightly anticlimactic at the end). I just got finished Ender's Game on Sunday, that was an excellent book. I went to Chapters last night to find something to read on the train tomorrow, and I was delighted to see that there was a series of Ender-related books. But figuring out which one came next proved too daunting. It turns out there are two separate paths of books that come out of the original, and the one I would have wanted wasn't there anyway. So I picked up "Treason" by the same author, it seemed interesting. I hope it is, because that's all I've got to kill time on the train.
Where ya off on a train to? I know you mentioned something about a conference somewhere, but I forget :)
You can borrow the book if you want.
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