Book · 2003
A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson traces how scientists figured out the age of the Earth, the size of the atom, and nearly everything else — told through the humans who got it wrong first.
What does Reddit think of A Short History of Nearly Everything?
Three mentions across seven years, all from r/askscience, all neutral in tone. That low volume isn't indifference — it reflects a book that readers point to when a thread needs a specific kind of answer: "how do we actually know this?" The top-upvoted comment (↑20) frames it exactly that way, recommending it for "the 'How we know what we know' thread." A second commenter (↑8) surfaces the nuclear isotope dating subplot as a throughline worth following. A third (↑5) adds that Bryson asks the same foundational questions the thread is asking, then backs them up with anecdotes. All three recommendations land on the same use case: a science book organized around epistemology rather than facts. Nobody on r/askscience calls it a favorite novel or a career text. They reach for it when a question arrives about scientific method and process. Three unique commenters, three years (2020, 2022, 2025), no dissent recorded.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · History of scientific discovery
- · Epistemology: how we know what we know
- · Science as a human, error-prone process
- · Earth science and cosmology for general readers
- · Narrative nonfiction structure applied to hard science
Common praise
- + Commenters on r/askscience pull it out specifically for 'how do we know this' questions, where most pop-science books would just state a fact.
- + The nuclear isotope dating subplot gets named as a memorable throughline rather than a dry methodology section.
- + Three separate recommenders across different years reach for the same book unprompted, suggesting it sticks.
Common criticism
- − With only 3 mentions total on Reddit, there's no sample of detractors in the data — the criticism simply hasn't been recorded in these threads.
- − Coverage stays narrow: all three mentions come from r/askscience, so readers outside the science-curious audience don't show up at all.
Who it's for
Pick this up if you've ever finished a Wikipedia rabbit hole on geological time or stellar nucleosynthesis and thought the article was missing the actual story of how anyone figured it out. Bryson's framing is less 'here are the facts' and more 'here is the mess of wrong guesses and lucky accidents that produced the facts.' r/askscience regulars reach for it when a thread arrives about scientific epistemology, not when someone wants a textbook. If your natural question after any science fact is 'but how did they measure that,' this is the book.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for A Short History of Nearly Everything?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“For those interested in the "How we know what we know" I really enjoyed the book A Short History of Nearly Everything. It is full of this kind of stuff
“Bill Bryson has a sorta entertaining book called "A short history of nearly everything". He covers a lot of science backstory stuff that's intertwined together but one of the main threads follows the guy who discovered how to do the nuclear isotope dating process for getting the age of the earth, a…
“I highly recommend “A short history of nearly everything” by Bill Bryson. In this book he asks the same question and many more about our universe and earth and how we learned what we know now, with lots of interesting anecdotes.
Convinced? Pick up A Short History of Nearly Everything
What else does r/askscience read?
Other books mentioned in the same sub, ranked. Shared-sub overlap with this title breaks ties.
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution makes more sense when you stop rooting for the organism and start watching the gene.
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee traces cancer from ancient papyrus to targeted therapy, framing it as a 4,000-year war medicine is still losing on some fronts.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe takes absurd physics questions — what if a baseball traveled at 90% the speed of light? — and answers them with actual math.
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin
A paleontologist finds a fish fossil in the Arctic and uses it to trace the evolutionary origin of your hands, ears, and hernias.
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking explains black holes, the Big Bang, and the edge of time to people who never took a physics class.
Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive
Philipp Dettmer
Philipp Dettmer of Kurzgesagt turns the immune system into a 300-page illustrated war story, written for the person who watched every YouTube video and still wanted more.
A Short History of Nearly Everything — frequently asked
What does Reddit actually say about A Short History of Nearly Everything?+
The data is thin but consistent: 3 mentions, all from r/askscience, all positive in framing. Every recommender targets the same use case — someone asking how scientists arrived at a finding, not just what the finding is. The highest-upvoted comment (↑20) flags it specifically for 'How we know what we know' threads. No detractors appear in the tracked data.
Is A Short History of Nearly Everything a good starting point if I don't have a science background?+
Based on r/askscience comments, yes. Commenters describe it as covering science backstory and anecdotes rather than technical depth. One recommender (↑5) notes Bryson asks the same questions a curious non-specialist would ask. Nobody in the thread qualifies it with 'you'll need prior knowledge.' It reads as an on-ramp, not a survey course.
How does A Short History of Nearly Everything compare to other popular science books Reddit recommends?+
The tracked data doesn't put it in direct competition with other titles — all three r/askscience mentions recommend it in isolation, not as an alternative to something else. It fills a specific slot (epistemology-forward narrative nonfiction) that commenters don't seem to find elsewhere in the same threads. That niche positioning may explain why it keeps reappearing across 2020, 2022, and 2025 despite low overall volume.
Should I read A Short History of Nearly Everything if I'm mainly interested in one area of science, not all of it?+
Depends on the area. The r/askscience data highlights the Earth age and nuclear isotope dating thread as a specific subplot that works as a standalone narrative. If your interest is geological or cosmological, commenters suggest it holds up. If you're after, say, biology or computing, the Reddit record offers no guidance — those threads haven't reached for it.