I found David Stern's review of Bill Bryson's book, A Short History of Nearly Everything (Eos, 86(20), 198, 17 May 2005), rather disturbing, for it raised a question that has been bothering me for some time. Stern has high praise for the book but comments that in the few instances where this reviewer knew the facts, they did not always jibe with the text. He goes on to point out factual errors regarding rather basic information that anyone should be able to obtain from standard references. This struck me as a familiar theme, because not long ago I had a similar reaction on reading Thomas Gold's book, The Deep Hot Biosphere. (Springer, 1998). I found the book fascinating until I came to topics I happen to know something about and realized that the author simply didn't know what he was talking about. My curiosity aroused, I went to other scientists who specialized in some of the other topics that Gold discusses and discovered a uniform reactionc It's a great book, but when he comes to something I know about, he's completely off base.