"Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business.” (Bill Bryson)

The moment I started reading it, I have been thinking why I never read Bill Bryson's work before! I am reading it rather slowly because there is so much in it. But even before reading half of it, I know that I am going to read it again.

About the book:

At some point in life, the idea fascinates us all:

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. ” (Maya Angelou)

But how? How it was created and how has it continued to exist in the way it does so? Most of us "normal" people have more pressing issues to reflect on.Well one day, the very same godforsaken idea was fortunate enough to find its way into the inquisitive and adventurous mind of Bill Bryson, so now he tells the story of how this question motivated mankind and what it yielded !

It is a story of the history of man's quest for knowledge about the universe and the extra-ordinary discoveries he made over the course of existence. As far as I have read it up till now, it is about the revelation about cosmology and basic physical sciences. No,no, it is not written by an obnoxious scientist, boasting about his work in nasty, hard-to-pronounce, encrypted words and taunting all the other scientists who were fatuous enough to think that they could share his own research interest. Bill Bryson is no scientist! The uniqueness of this book is that the writer treats scientists/researchers as human beings, not just documenting what they found out or invented, but he narrates their accomplishments (or blunders) in the backdrop of circumstances they were living in, their nature and habits and the obstacles they faced. No, just hang on. he does not tell all that in the notorious dry, boring tone of historical volumes, rather he ... oh I don't know yet how to describe it best. Probably like grandfathers usually speak when they tell really fascinating tales to their little grand-children, who cannot really grasp the solemness of what is being told to them. He knows how to keep non-scientists engaged in listening to indeed very sophisticated concepts of science. Let's just say that he tells in a way that you want to hear more.

Some of my favorite quotes, to give a taste of the tone of the book, rather than the scientific and historical facts it tells:

"For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under-appreciated state known as existence. Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level."

"So thank goodness for atoms. But the fact that you have atoms and that they assemble in such a willing manner is only part of what got you here. To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business."

"What is extraordinary from our point of view is how well it turned out for us. If the universe had formed just a tiny bit differently—if gravity were fractionally stronger or weaker, if the expansion had proceeded just a little more slowly or swiftly—then there might never have been stable elements to make you and me and the ground we stand on. Had gravity been a trifle stronger, the universe itself might have collapsed like a badly erected tent, without precisely the right values to give it the right dimensions and density and component parts. Had it been weaker, however, nothing would have coalesced. The universe would have remained forever a dull, scattered void."