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"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson is really fantastic. https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X https://www.ama

• Radim 9y ago
  What makes ASHoNE so fantastic is it doesn't shy away from "science is messy; while there is a common quest for objective truth for the most part, it's incredibly convoluted, random, non-linear, and in any case polluted by our apish propensities". That's what makes the book so relatable. A fry cry for that worrying pop trend of "Science is so awesome, bro!" that's been picking up lately (which I find superficial and cringy to the point of being a cult).
  • whatshisface 9y ago
    The people who say "science is so awesome," are usually looking at NASA pictures and relatively long-known facts, in the tradition of Sagan's science pubicization. I've never seen a "science is so cool," meme about loop quantum gravity in 1D universes with the topology of a circle, or about a social sciences pilot studies. So, in that sense it's fine that they're leaving out the messy part; after all the entire point is to turn the messy into the clean.