A review by miocyon
The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages by David Bercovici

2.0

Writing about the entire history of the universe is hard to do in a way that is accessible and doesn't take up 30 volumes. This books tries to do it in 115 pages, and doesn't do a great job of it. It says right off the bat that it's a vanity project of a well-known geophysicist, and it feels like it. The book is strongest in the parts that he knows well, and laughably inadequate (or down right wrong) in the parts he doesn't (e.g., the chapter on human evolution). We tried this as a book for a broad, multi-quarter general education sciences class that I teach (it was chosen by one of my co-instructors), and I wouldn't use it again. Too glib, lacking in illustration, and uneven, a chapter or two of it may be useful, but as whole, unsatisfying. Wait for my own vanity project on the topic...