Bill Bryson's wide-eyed 'gee-whizz' style, which characterises his travelogues, is not to everyone's liking, writes Paul Stammers.

While I am a (moderate) Bryson fan, the breathy enthusiasm of the first few pages made me wary of wading through nearly 500 pages explaining the wonder of how scientists came to unpick the universe's innermost secrets.

However, Bryson soon settles down and approaches his task with aplomb.

He makes a familiar point, that science can be astonishing, but scientific literature is often turgid to read. This is his attempt to compile an overview that I would class as 'infotainment'.

Bryson's gift is to weave facts and anecdotes in a seemingly blithe fashion, but underpinned with narrative discipline. He has a flair for uncovering the way the world's greatest thinkers have been spectacularly bitchy, baffling or boring.

I had heard, for example, of the Oxford geologist the Rev William Buckland, but was unaware how his zest for nature included a penchant for eating gerbils and hedgehogs. Such asides do not throw any new light on the controversies, but leaven the mix and remind the reader how scientists are often anything but the coldly rational, aloof stereotype.

The science is delivered in an economical, yet fairly cogent manner. However, a few more paragraphs about how key experiments were undertaken would not go amiss.

And if Bryson, who has written two books about language but is pigeon-holed as a travel writer, aspires to be taken more seriously, he must avoid the sort of brash nonchalance to which he is occasionally prone in this book.

He asserts, for example, in a passage about the astronomer Edwin Hubble, that it should have been obvious even in the 17th century that the universe was expanding, rather than being static.

It is debatable whether, in an era when so much user-friendly and more comprehensive popular science is available, that this book is needed, other than to whet the newcomer's appetite. But Bryson's cheery style is distinctive and often charming.