A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition

Bill Bryson

Crown Publishing Group, Nov 30, 2010 - History - 624 pages

Bill Bryson is one of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journey–into the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer. It’s a dazzling quest, the intellectual odyssey of a lifetime, as this insatiably curious writer attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. Or, as the author puts it, “…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.” This is, in short, a tall order.

To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the world’s most profound scientific minds, living and dead. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemisty, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if there isn’t some way to render them comprehensible to people, like himself, made bored (or scared) stiff of science by school. His interest is not simply to discover what we know but to find out how we know it. How do we know what is in the center of the earth, thousands of miles beneath the surface? How can we know the extent and the composition of the universe, or what a black hole is? How can we know where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?

On his travels through space and time, Bill Bryson encounters a splendid gallery of the most fascinating, eccentric, competitive, and foolish personalities ever to ask a hard question. In their company, he undertakes a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only this superb writer can render it. Science has never been more involving, and the world we inhabit has never been fuller of wonder and delight.


From the Hardcover edition.

What people are saying

Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

User Review  - Keiron Tumbleton - Goodreads

If your into the nitty-gritty of singularity and big bang and cellular atom structure and the minutiae of geology and paleontology and ...then you'll have a potential interest in this book. The ...

Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

User Review  - Eric - Goodreads

In some ways, this book is a tour de force, an incredible compilation of knowledge from such a wide variety of sources as to be thoroughly impressive. And of course, Bill Bryson's writing is smooth ...

About the author

Bill Bryson’s bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, I’m a Stranger Here Myself, In A Sunburned Country, Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, Bill Bryson's African Diary, and A Short History of Nearly Everything. He lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and children.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition
• Author: Bill Bryson
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group, 2010
• ISBN: 030788516X, 9780307885166
• Length: 624 pages
• Subjects: History / World; Science / Essays