[jleyank]

You have to like his writing style but bill Bryson’s short history of everything. James burke’s day the universe changed is thought provoking and bronowski’s ascent of man is also good.

Timothy Ferris (not that one) and John gribbin have also trod this area.

[WhompingWindows]

Came here to suggest Bill Bryson's Short History of Everything. It covers a lot of less top-of-mind concepts, like he delves into air-balloons, artificial cloud making, moss collections, geological history, botany, and all manner of fields.

[etrautmann]

I also recommend this - he walks through how we know what we know across many fields of science and it’s highly informative and entertaining throughout

[throw0101a]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_(science_historian...

[Jxl180]

It's just unfortunately very out of date. He says something like, "finding the Higgs-Boson Wil be a task for a different century" or something to that effect.

[adhesive_wombat]

The actual quote is "whether it actually exists is a matter for 21st century physics," so he was completely correct. It was, indeed, a matter for 21st century physics: the Higgs boson was proven to exist in 2012: about 9 years after the book was published.

[Jxl180]

To be fair, I didn’t say he was wrong, I said it’s out of date.

[adhesive_wombat]

Well, you kind of made it sound like he was predicting it wouldn't be found for a century (though I suppose is he'd written the book just 4 years earlier, he'd then be right).

It actually goes into some detail about why the Higgs boson is important, it just says "it hasn't been found yet". If you fill in the epilogue of "the Higgs boson was found in 2012" yourself, those pages are still consistent, correct and useful.

It would really be out of date if the Higgs had been disproved, as it would have two pages of, essentially, a branch predictor failure.

[Jxl180]

I honestly thought the book was written in the 80s or 90s. I didn’t know it was as recent as 2003. That’s totally on me.

[mariedavid]

Thanks, I have heard a lot about Bill Bryson but never took the time to read it. I will start with this one.