In Praise of (Two) Old White Guys
I’VE JUST SPENT 900 pages in the company of two “old white guys”: the Australian zoologist and explorer Tim Flannery, 63, and the American-English writer Bill Bryson, 67. They have each published a plump volume in time for Christmas, two fat, rich puddings of science – both, thanks to their consummate skill, easy to digest.
Bryson’s book describes “this warm wobble of flesh” – the human body, with its skin, heart, bones, guts, blood, brain and immune system; its diseases and its mortality – with the same breezy humour that made his science bestseller A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) such a classic.
The Body: A Guide for Occupants
(Penguin Random House, $55), like all great popular science books, grasps the nettle of complexity without thrashing the reader to death with it. There’s the immune system, for instance, which I call mind-bogglingly complicated and
You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.
Start your free 30 days