Product Description

One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.

In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #744 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-14
• Released on: 2004-09-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.com
From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With his distinctive prose style and wit, Bryson succeeds admirably. Though A Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and covers the same material as every science book before it, it reads something like a particularly detailed novel (albeit without a plot). Each longish chapter is devoted to a topic like the age of our planet or how cells work, and these chapters are grouped into larger sections such as "The Size of the Earth" and "Life Itself." Bryson chats with experts like Richard Fortey (author of Life and Trilobite) and these interviews are charming. But it's when Bryson dives into some of science's best and most embarrassing fights--Cope vs. Marsh, Conway Morris vs. Gould--that he finds literary gold. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly
As the title suggests, bestselling author Bryson (In a Sunburned Country) sets out to put his irrepressible stamp on all things under the sun. As he states at the outset, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. "This is a book about how it happened," the author writes. "In particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since." What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Bryson relies on some of the best material in the history of science to have come out in recent years. This is great for Bryson fans, who can encounter this material in its barest essence with the bonus of having it served up in Bryson's distinctive voice. But readers in the field will already have studied this information more in-depth in the originals and may find themselves questioning the point of a breakneck tour of the sciences that contributes nothing novel. Nevertheless, to read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking for most readers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
In his first major work in three years, Bryson takes on, well, everything. From the components of the atom to the size of the universe to the age of the Earth, Bryson describes the history behind scientific discovery. Sometimes mystified, often admiring, Bryson regales listeners with the follies and feats in science. It's amazing how much we know and how we found it out. It's astounding, however, how much we have yet to learn. Listeners may have to work a bit harder in this departure from Bryson's usual travel writing. His easy pace and sincere delivery, however, make names, dates, and concepts digestible. It's a pleasure to hear Bryson's voice, like that of an old friend, remind us how incredible existence is. Not to be missed. J.M.P. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

The history of our world for dummies
Bryson does a great job of compiling a huge amount of information into a mere 475 pages. It is well organized, easy to read, and surprisingly enjoyable considering the complexity of certain topics. While some subjects, like geology, microbiology and atomic structure were a bit tedious, I really enjoyed reading about astronomy and especially anthropology (my favorite class in college). This comprehensive book embarks upon the history of the world we live in, from the nothingness of a pre-Big Bang universe, to the atoms that compose everything, to the primordial soup that yielded life, and to our most ancient hominid ancestors. What makes this book work is not that Bryson presents the history of nearly everything, but how these everythings were discovered. He investigates the history of exploration and narrates how scientists discovered answers to some of the most fundamental questions pertaining to who we are and how we came to be (especially during the 18th and 19th centuries). Bryson's goal was to fulfill his readers in ways that textbooks never did and he did that in an entertaining and often humorous way. For someone like me who often cringes at the mention of certain science topics (physics, chemistry), Bryson's delivery felt comfortable and was not intimidating. Best of all, Bryson left me with awe and wonder at the sequence of events that led our planet to enable our existence.

Interesting but not up to my expectations
The book covers the history of several scientific areas and tries to tell a coherent story covering the most important discoveries. Most chapters give interesting information, but sometimes the historic trivia outnumber the scientific facts and figures. Chapters 4-5-6 are long winded and almost caused me to stop reading (they definitely need rewriting!). The second half of the book (biology, anthropology) has sounder foundations and is better argumented. It is certainly an interesting work for later reference and it gives an interesting and very extensive bibliography. Some of the conclusions are biased or lack correct arguments (especially where physics is involved, it often comes down to popular talking rahter than correctly argumented science, so in the end you learn nothing new). All in all a book worth reading and owning but a little disappointing, considering the enormous expectations formed by some reviews.

One of the Most Useful and Best Science Books I Own
This is a fantastic book. If you're interested in science and history, this is the book for you. Bryson brings up interesting trivia about key people and events in science history.

He shares the story of Thomas Midgley. His two great claims to fame were putting lead into gasoline and the development of chlorofluorocarbons. Bryson shares the observation that seldom has one person inflicted so much damage with his inventions.

I have a "junk" copy of the book that I have marked and written in. I use this to read to my 6th & 7th grade students when we are discussing that topic in science. I also love the way he begins the book. I can't think of a better way to start the school year to the read the beginning of the book.

Each year I recommend this book to my student's parents when I send out my monthly newsletter to them.

I strongly recommend this book and assure you that you won't regret your purchase!