I can’t help it–I’m an information junkie, but I lack advanced training in science and history (and a few other areas I’m curious about) and have very little motivation to get advanced training, so I read popularizers like Carl Sagan and Bill Bryson and William Manchester for pleasure, only to be tutored by my betters that these guys are lacking, ignorant, oversimplifying, or just flat-out wrong on many, many occasions, which detracts from my pleasure.
The problem is these guys can WRITE. I rationalize continuing to read them by thinking that I’m getting a decent introduction to these areas, and surely learning much more that is correct than otherwise, even if I’m absorbing a lot of misinformation.
The chapter in Manchester’s THE GLORY AND THE DREAM that describes FDR’s death and its effect on Americans still makes me feel weepy, but I suppose if I read some scholarly biographies of FDR, I’d find he committed a few mistakes. Maybe it’s sufficient to know that the mistakes could well be there, but to enjoy reading the prose anyway.
Carl Sagan was perhaps the most inspiring science popularizer of modern times. His books are still well worth reading, and his venerable Cosmos series still worth watching despite now being dated in many respects. As a celebrated popularizer of science for the masses, he’s naturally attracted his share of detractors and criticism, but I think most of it is greatly overblown. Compare him, for instance, to Michio Kaku, who seems like a fine fellow and probably a competent theoretical physicist, but IMHO much too prone to fanciful bullshit.
Bill Bryson: What can I say? He’s a little like the original ChatGPT before ChatGPT existed. Entertaining, a great storyteller, and, in truth, a provider of many interesting facts. Certainly the tales of his many travels are good reading. The problem, as with ChatGPT, is that when he presents alleged facts you never know when the fascinating yarn-spinning has gone off the rails of fact and plunged into the ravine of bullshit. Fact-checking doesn’t seem to be his forte. I say enjoy him, but don’t take everything his says as necessarily exactly accurate. He’s a story-teller, not a scientist or historian. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed his One Summer: America, 1927. It was a fun read, and if there were inaccuracies in it that Bryson may not have fully vetted, I don’t care – it was marvelously entertaining. It’s just important that it not be regarded as entirely serious, well-vetted history.
I can’t comment on William Manchester. I haven’t read anything of his.
Another example in this vein is Men of Mathematics, E. T. Bell’s 1937 popular book on the life and work of famous mathematicians. It has inspired generations of readers to study math; and it is famously unreliable as to the historical facts.
I think this is good advice in general. It’s good practice not to place too much trust in what any one author says, especially if they’re writing about something that they’re not personally an expert in. Everyone’s fallible (whether because they’re careless about fact-checking, make honest mistakes, are good at telling just one side of the story, or have had new developments in the field render their writing outdated). You’re probably better off reading the writers you enjoy and taking everything they say with a grain of salt (at least until you can back it up with further research) than you would be reading a more reliable author and assuming that everything they say is The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth.
I will heartily second James Burke’s Connections. I discovered PBS in high school during the early 80’s and I recall watching back to back episodes of Cosmos and Connections. It was bliss.
Connections really is an aptly named show, as Burke deftly tracked down the ways in which various technologies over time were connected.in unexpected and unlikely ways. He always managed to keep the pacing of the show breathlessly moving along; no mean feat when you’re talking about a topic as potentially dry as science and technology can be.
My first encounter with James Burke was his other series, “The Day the Universe Changed.” It seems to be sort of forgotten now, but I think it’s quite worthwhile, along with the various Connections series.
Eventually you will have to read more detailed and difficult books about the subjects you’re interested in or you’ll simply find yourself reading about the same things over and over.