A Short History is the size of a high school textbook with considerable heft, so it's been a "bed book": a book that I can only read in bed because it's too cumbersome to stash in my purse and bring with me to my favorite solo dining spots in Lahaina.
Because the book is so big, I picked up a "travel book" or a "lightweight": a book that is portable and can be enjoyed anywhere. My newest lightweight is Rules of Civility, a novel by Amor Towles (please take a moment to admire the author's name). I have only read the opening few pages, but I'm hooked. I foresee a potential conflict as I struggle to keep Rules shut and stick to just reading Bryson's Short History at home.
However, I am thoroughly engrossed in Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. With his signature stock of wit and wry observations and unending curiosity, Bryson's book is "the answer to the Great Question, of Life, the Universe and Everything" (forgive me for quoting Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it almost had to be done). Bryson's book came about as an effort to educate himself about the world we live in: how the universe came to be, how the planet Earth formed and how humans evolved into what we are today.
The book has a wonderful cohesive narrative as Bryson marches through history, but what makes the book so accessible is Bryson's coverage of huge scientific topics in cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics...and the list goes on. What makes this book so fascinating is that Bryson revels in everything that he has researched and discovered, and you can't help but marvel along with him. The book is not just about what we know about our universe and the planet, but how we came to know it. The human stories of these huge scientific endeavors are thrilling and downright amazing. It blows my mind what was discovered and concluded before modern technology (like how far the earth is from the sun and the mass of our planet).
There are so many things in A Short History that I am being bowled over by, but I especially like the concept that supernovae is the reason that we can exist on earth. A supernova occurs "when a giant star, one much bigger than our own Sun, collapses and then spectacularly explodes, releasing in an instant the energy of a hundred billion suns, burning for a time more brightly than all the stars in the galaxy" (Bryson). Supernovae generate the kind of heat needed "to forge carbon and iron and the other [heavier] elements without which we would be distressingly immaterial" (Bryson).
This following quote is not from Bill Bryson, but from Lawrence M. Krauss, a Canadian-American theoretical physicist:
The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.
Of course, Krauss' closing statement in the quote above has caused some controversy, and he continues to generate debate as he tells us to put our ideas of religion aside and examine the facts and the science, because the science can be just as marvelous and miraculous as what we read in the Bible.
The quote is from Krauss' lecture turned book entitled A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing. I haven't read it myself, but I am putting it on my list. If you are interested in more of Krauss' thoughts on cosmology, you can read a transcript of his NPR interview.
I know close to nothing about cosmology, but what I have been learning has been captivating, entertaining, mind blowing and astounding, and makes me realize how very lucky I am to be who I am and where I am. The tiniest of deviations in history could have changed my entire life or negated my entire existence. Bryson writes:
Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once...
The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting--fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes into view, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will close down, then silently disassemble and go off to be other things.
It makes me think long and hard about the choices that I make to fill my 650,000 hours.
I could spend less time worrying. I worry about a lot of things: what other people think of me, if my stomach is too fat, if I will ever have a job that is more fulfilling than waitressing but makes more money than what I get tipped, if my collection of freckles are cancerous, if I will get eaten by a shark when swimming--well, I guess if that happened, I wouldn't be worrying anymore, and I wouldn't have to be concerned about what choices I make in my 650,000 hours allotted to me.
Granted, I think I have also done some really amazing things in my 650,000 hours. I have traveled. Extensively. I am forever grateful to my family to have had this opportunity. I have cultivated meaningful relationships with my family and friends. I continue to make good efforts to meeting new people and learning about new experiences. I made the very ambitious and brave move away from everything and everyone I knew to live in Maui--and I have absolutely and truly never been happier.
There are certainly people who have done more, and people who have done less, but I am going to do my best to stop comparing and really focus on making the rest of my 650,000 hours as enjoyable as they can be.
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