Surprisingly, the pace of the book picked up quite a bit- or maybe its just that because the topic changed, it became a whole lot more interesting. The topic change was that Bryson started talking about more recent scientific undertakings, things that have occurred in the last 200 years or so. Overall, probably the most fascinating thing to me is the more recent history like when Bryson starts talking about how the atom was discovered and Einstein's theories. Besides those things, Bryson also talked about the discovery and naming of dinosaurs, how certain scientists interacted, the founding of chemistry, the modernization of chemistry, radiology, several different discoveries, and radioactivity among several other things. Overall I'm finding, Bryson's audience is probably people that are interested in science and its history, although I'm not too sure about this. I am not sure about this because there are times when he gets really detailed into explaining things, but there are also times that he simplifies things quite a bit to make it easier to understand, which implies that either the people reading this have a good bit of education in science or that they like science a lot but do not necessarily have a good education in science nor do the understand the basic principles of science. Bryson does write though as if he was sitting your living room, talking with you and telling you about the history of science and various funny stories that are related to science in some way or another. Because Bryson writes like this, it draws the reader into the text more.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
2/3 for 3/18/10
I'm glad that you've come to enjoy the book. I did--though I feel that I must go back to it because I've forgotten much. If only I knew as much as he did when he wrote it. If you're enjoying Einstein, just wait until you get to Newton!
Did you remember to identify the year of publication with the first entry? I can't remember and can't see from here.
it's the first sentence above the paragraph that I wrote, I wonder why it's not showing up?
Post a Comment