A Short History of Nearly Everything(Bill Bryson)

It's a book of highly entertaining history of science.  
 
"Bryson enlivens his accounts of difficult concepts with entertaining historical vignettes. We learn, for example, of the Victorian naturalist whose scientific endeavours included serving up mole and spider to his guests; and of the Norwegian palaeontologist who miscounted the number of fingers and toes on one of the most important fossil finds of recent history and wouldn't let anyone else have a look at it for more than 48 years."
-- John Waller, The Guardian