Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is an American-British author whose popular science and travel writing combine meticulous research, genuine curiosity, and a wry comic voice that has made him one of the best-loved nonfiction writers alive.

Bill Bryson grew up in Iowa and has spent much of his adult life in Britain, which has given him the perspective of a perpetual outsider comfortable in two worlds — a position that serves his writing well. He is one of the most entertaining nonfiction writers working in English, and his particular gift is making complex, sprawling subjects feel accessible and thrilling without simplifying them into dishonesty.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, published in 2003, is his most ambitious book: an attempt to explain the history of science — cosmology, geology, biology, chemistry — for general readers who may have found science dry or intimidating in school. It works because Bryson approaches every subject with the enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered it, because he prioritizes scientists as human beings over science as disembodied fact, and because he writes with a comic timing that makes even dense material engaging. The book is not a complete account — it can’t be — but it is a superb introduction. The Body: A Guide for Occupants applies the same approach to human biology, touring the systems and organs with characteristic curiosity and humor.

Bryson’s critics occasionally note that he can underestimate complexity and that his books sometimes skim the surface of their enormous subjects. This is fair, though it somewhat mistakes the genre. He is an enthusiast and a storyteller, not a specialist, and his books are best judged by whether they send readers toward further curiosity — which they reliably do.