The success of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything lies in his ability to make the content of natural science serendipity as exciting and accessible to readers as it is to its practitioners. Some of the devices that he uses to achieve exciting prose are dramatically effective, whereas some of the mechanisms that he uses to achieve accessibility are a little tiresome. Ultimately, Bryson shows us why he deserves a spot in the literary canon of contemporary popular science with his audaciously-titled entry.

Prior to reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, geology did not excite me. Bryson changed my perception of geology by leveraging a powerful device that would prove thematic. The book is arranged as chronologically successive attempts at answering the most powerful questions of the natural sciences: Where do we come from? Are we alone? What are we made of? Bryson creates an excitement about geology by asking the same questions that the upstanding membership of Victorian era geological societies excitedly sought to answer: How old is the Earth? What is the mass of the Earth? Has the Earth always looked the same?

Bryson follows the standard popular-science storytelling format by providing miniaturized biographies for each historical character. Bryson's excellent storytelling and articulated explanations obviate the need for any mathematical or symbolic descriptions. The only equation that Bryson shows is Newton's law of universal gravitation, "which is of course way beyond anything that most of us could make practical use of," Bryson laments, "but at least we can appreciate that it is elegantly compact." Bryson makes some other awkward apologies to the non-technical, non-mathematical reader. In the introduction he spends four pages establishing a layperson ethos while standing amid the rubble of the fourth wall that he has broken with an opening "Welcome." But this is less a criticism of his writing as it is of subjective stylistic choices. Bryson is simply grappling with the inherent difficulties confronting a superstar author in speaking to a huge and diverse readership.

Bryson's writing is otherwise always entertaining. When he laments the lack of researchers working on a particular microscopic aquatic animal of importance to evolutionary biology, he says of the researchers, "They can be found all over the world, but you could have all the bdelloid rotifer experts in the world to dinner and not have to borrow plates from the neighbors." Such accessible eloquence is perfect for the popular science genre. Bryson, instead of dubiously enumerating an unknown but small number of scientists, gives us some cute imagery. It also has the effect of alleviating the information density with which Bryson lovingly burdens the reader in his treatise of such great length, 544 pages to be exact.

After hearing so much from friends and fellow popular-science readers about A Short History of Nearly Everything, I am glad to have finally read it. The book manages to be accessible as a popular science starting point while still capable of holding the interest of seasoned popular science readers. With A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson shows himself a giant of the popular science genre.

Command and Control is a sobering look at nuclear weapon accidents and the inescapable probability of accidental nuclear war. With great research effort and literary ability, Schlosser takes the reader through a Cold War chronology interspersed with a recounting of the Titan II explosion at Damascus. The chronology is focused, adept, and engaging. Surprisingly, the Damascus accident is not. In the end, a powerful explosion lends a powerful crescendo, and the curtain is drawn on a satisfying journey through a climactic microcosm set to the nuclear-political background of the Cold War.

Schlosser begins and then periodically comes back to a progressive recounting of Damascus. The uninitiated reader of military history receives a baptismal waterfall of acronyms that sets a solid foundation for the rest of the book. In fact, Schlosser provides a few pages of acronyms up front after the table of contents. They are a helpful inclusion. The military's proclivity for acronyms is as voracious as their consumption of the federal budget.

Recounting the events of Damascus begins slowly and carefully. Each participant is characterized at length by their entry to the story. Most often, a serviceman leaves his young wife and young children to respond to the call of duty of a young military career. Wasted youth is thematic.

The pace of the retelling is mirrored in the event itself. Most of the action consists of standing around and waiting. Schlosser makes awkward use of profanity in attempts to accelerate the pace. For instance, in the chapter titled "Like Hell," the first sentence is, "The outer door was a real bitch." This is not dialogue. Why Schlosser chooses to borrow writing from the toolbox of adolescent-boy fiction authors, I do not know. More likely, Schlosser is remembering a discussion he had with a primary source, one of the tens of retired servicemen and public servants that Schlosser tirelessly interviewed to write this book.

The extensive Cold War nuclear history and revelations from recently-unclassified documents are far more interesting than the long, drawn-out Damascus accident. The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) is the biggest shocker. The official nuclear war plan from 1960 to 2003, the SIOP was commissioned to coordinate nuclear strike targets amongst different branches of the military in order to prevent overkill. It was so secret that it was only shared with the Secretary of Defense, in the forty years of its existence it shocked and sickened many an administration's Secretary. Thousands of nuclear weapons were to be dropped on hundreds of cities in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Eastern Europe. The conservative casualty estimate was an inconceivable 220 million, or ten times the total number of deaths during World War II. The SIOP was staggering. It would have been humanity's final act.

Nuclear war today, while not imminent, is still eminent. Schlosser's Command and Control demands that we not forget the complexity or chaos of the Cold War, its history of accidents, and our nearness to unbridled destruction. There is nothing more terrifying than the precariousness of human existence. Teetering on the edge of nuclear genocide, the follies of politicians and the military very nearly initiate nuclear war by accident, repeatedly, for a half-century. This is Schlosser's masterpiece. For his trespasses into unfortunate diction he is resoundly forgiven.

In his first novel of note, Andy Weir thoroughly explores the marooned-man-on-Mars trope in a well-researched, exciting, and plot-driven man vs. nature adventure. Weir did his research. Human space exploration, orbital mechanics, and planetary science are featured in great detail. Character depth and development are not. The story is eventful, the characters are dull and undeveloped. The protagonist, Mark Watney, is inane. Ultimately, Weir's exciting storytelling outshines his asinine protagonist and yields fruitful fiction.

For anyone who loves popular science and needs an entree into fiction, The Martian provides a great deal more satisfaction than the annals of contemporary novels. Science and ingenuity permeate the plot. In three hundred pages of scientifically-plausible survival scenario problem solving, Weir only strays thrice from reality. First, given the thinness of the Martian atmosphere, a Martian dust storm of the highest speed can only yield a maximum force equivalent to a 5 mile-per-hour breeze on Earth, far less than enough force to upend any person or piece of spacecraft requisite for initiating our astronaut's conflict. Second, existing radiation shielding technology is insufficient to protect human life from radiation-induced death, and Weir leaves no explanations for how his protagonist survives hundreds of days of radiation's onslaught. Third, a character from Chicago would never refer to a highway or expressway as a freeway.

Weir spent "three years" writing The Martian, including the time that it took to write the simulation software to check his math on the orbital mechanics. In order to write the book, Weir had to pick a launch date and strictly adhere to the physical consequences of that date - most importantly, the distance between Earth and Mars as a function of time. The accurate correspondence between the distance and the date can be verified using Watney's dated log, and is so precise that one can perform orbital mechanics calculations for the mission in reverse to determine the unspecified launch date.

Much of Weir's writing of Watney is pleasant, sarcastic deadpan. Late in the story Watney drinks "nothing tea," a sardonic reference to hot water consumed in the absence of anything to brew in it. These are enjoyable, light-hearted moments. Other Watney moments are cringe-worthy. One example is when Watney inexplicably invents the "pirate-ninja" as a novel unit of measurement. Aliased units exist in physics, but where one Newton is equal to one kilogram-meters per second squared, one "pirate-ninja" is equal to one confession of "I appropriate Internet culture." Pirate ninja, pirates v. ninjas, or any iteration of pirate and ninja, is a tired Internet meme. It is not meant for print today, much less over ten years ago when this meme was created and popularized. The same can be said for Weir's self-proclaimed "favorite" gag in the novel, the Aquaman joke, which is Internet-appropriated, incredibly stale, and shamelessly recycled as well.

Watney's destruction of the fourth wall in log-book ramblings does serve a larger purpose than conveyance of stolen jokes. In the absence of character development (aside from the superficial growth of Mindy Park, a minor character who is mentioned on fewer than ten pages), Watney's logs yield an inspiring quality in their thematic autonomy. Thoughts of failure are always facetious. Never does Watney question his ability to affect his survival. Watney unquestioningly avoids even partial adoption of the defeatist mental state. Perseverance in this manner is standard survival novel cliche. However, Weir's story has enough candor to jump Watney's survival instinct across the fine line from cliche to aphorism.

Andy Weir is a now a superstar novelist thanks to an engaging and accurate depiction of Martian survival. It matters not to Weir, nor the typical reader, that the thrilling plot is littered with poorly written and appropriated Internet culture, and is also totally absent any semblance of character development. Weir's unapologetic adherence to scientific plausibility, paired with an awesome story, is his saving grace. But, if there is a next time for Weir, and many readers including this reviewer hopes that there is, Weir needs to do without the adolescent diction, without the shameless cultural appropriation, and without cringe-inducing flippancy. The Martian is mainstream-exciting, science-driven, and completely inane.

I just finished reading Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, written by the Director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie R. Groves. Groves was selected to direct the Manhattan Project, the codename for which was the Manhattan Engineering District (MED), after supervising the construction of the Pentagon. He was the best project manager in the Army and in directing the MED he was in charge of the biggest wartime military undertaking (outside of WWII itself).

Littered about his memoir of the MED are kernels of sage wisdom on project management. I have collected my favorites here for safekeeping.

1. Cap committees at three. Groves was required to report on the activities of the MED to an advisory committee. Secretary of War Henry Stimson "suggested that the committee should consist of nine or possibly seven men." Groves objected. A committee so large would be "unwieldy; it would cause delays in taking action; and some, if not the majority, of its members would tend to treat it as a secondary responsibility to the detriment of its progress." Groves also said that a smaller group is easier to keep "well informed" and it is easier to "obtain advice from them" (p. 24).

2. Avoid micromanaging. Groves said it best when describing the advantages of selecting Washington D.C. as HQ for his project, "Another major advantage [of Washington D.C.] was that distance alone prevented me from becoming involved in too many details, which is so dampening to the initiative of subordinates" (p. 27).

3. Prefer rapid prototyping. Groves needed to decide which project to prioritize: uranium enrichment or plutonium production. Given the magnitude of uncertainties his initial decision was much less important than the execution. Groves recognized that "nothing would be more fatal to success than to try to arrive at a perfect plan before taking any important step" (p. 42).

4. It is better to be feared than loved. "We were not engaged in a popularity contest," Groves said, "but in an extremely serious undertaking." Groves refused to allow frictions between his supervision and the Chicago group to undermine his chain-of-command.

5. Look to pathos where ethos and logos may fail. Groves needed to convince DuPont, a chemical company, to contract for the construction of the plutonium production facilities. DuPont was the only company of necessary size and technical expertise for the project. Groves gives a gripping re-telling of the meeting where DuPont made their decision:

"As the directors entered the room at their next Board meeting, they were asked not to look at the faced-down papers on the table in front of them. [The company president] explained that the Executive Committee was recommending that du Pont accept a contract from the government for a project in a previously unexplored field so large and so difficult that it would strain the capacity of the company to the utmost. He added that there were elements of hazard in it that under certain conditions could very well seriously damage if not well-nigh destroy du Pont. He said that the highest officials in government, as well as those who knew the most about it, considered it to be of the highest military importance. Even its purpose was held in extreme secrecy, although if any Board member wished to he was free to read the faced-down papers before voting. Not a single man, and they were all heavy stockholders, turned them over before voting approval - or afterwards - a true display of real patriotism" (p. 51).

6. Ask for something in person. "My experience here," Groves said about a particularly pleasant encounter, "was a graphic demonstration of the importance of extending common courtesy to those with whom you expect to conduct important business. There is no substitute for it. Going out of our way to establish initial contact with other organizations and individuals through calls by senior personnel, instead of by letter or telephone, was common practice in the Manhattan Project."

7. Do not stress over things outside of your control. The Trinity test at Alamogordo was delayed by ninety minutes due to unfavorable weather. Groves and Oppenheimer spent the night before the test receiving weather reports and wrestling with the decision to delay. Then Groves went to sleep (p. 293). Similarly, while Groves was waiting in Washington D.C. for news from Tinian on the Hiroshima bombing happening half a world away, Groves played tennis (p. 320).

Finally, I should also include the advice that Groves specifically enumerated at the very end of his book. Groves cited the following five qualities of the Manhattan Project as contributors to its success (p. 414):

1. A specific objective - creating a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible

2. Specific tasks - each part of the project had a well-understood responsibility

3. Great leadership - "positive, clear-cut, unquestioned direction… at all levels."

4. Available capital - "[the] project made maximum use of already existing agencies, facilities, and services"

5. Unlimited resources - "[the MED] had the full backing of our government."