Truth be told, I've been a fan of Carl Sagan since decades, since the time I used to watch his TV series 'Cosmos'. I've always firmly believed Sagan to be the high priest of popular science, the one person who brought together his deep knowledge in myriad disciplines together into one cohesive narrative, ably carrying forward the legacy of European polymath scientists and mathematicians of 16th century and later. And 'Cosmos' perhaps epitomized that ability.
But having read (or actually listened to, on Audible) 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', I'm persuaded to believe that Bill Bryson walks in Sagan's illustrious footsteps surefootedly and with an assured voice. Bryson's book brings together updated knowledge and perspectives on earth sciences, astronomy, core sciences including genetics, archeology and paleontology, medicine, anthropology and sociology, among other fields. On similar lines as Sagan, but with whole new perspectives. Perhaps the only 'Sagan-like' thing missing in this encyclopedic work is the 'leaps of inspiration' strewn throughout 'Cosmos', which many may've been tempted to dismiss as 'philosophizing', but which actually acted as the fulcrum of Sagan's arguments. Bryson goes some way on that path towards the end, especially when ruminating on the pernicious consequences that the rise of humankind has had on the 'disappearance' of thousand of species since ancient times. But otherwise, he revels in bringing to the reader cutting-edge knowledge on how the earth and life on it (including, lately, mankind, which has been there for only a minuscule proportion of earth's age of 4.5 billion odd years) evolved.
One theme running across the book is the huge number of occasions when one scientist discovered or invented something, and someone else ended up getting all the credit (and, lately, the Nobel that went with it). As Bryson quotes one scientist, 'First they refute it, then they accept it, then they credit the wrong person'! And this has been true not only of controversial cases like (allegedly misogynistic) James Watson et all being awarded the Nobel for discovering the structure of DNA, relegating Rosalind Franklin who apparently did most of the gruntwork in X-ray crystallography, and eventually died from the cancer she got while working with it and was thus could not be considered for the Nobel (which is not awarded after the passing of a person).