A Short History Of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson

Black Swan, Jan 6, 2004 - History - 686 pages

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

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 is much loved for his bestselling travel books, from The Lost Continent to Down Under, but Notes from a Small Island has earned a particularly special place in the nation's heart (a national poll for World Book Day in 2003 voted it the book that best represents Britain). His acclaimed A Short History of Nearly Everything won the Aventis Prize for Science Books and the Descartes Science Communication Prize. He has now returned to live in the UK with his wife and family.www.billbryson.co.uk

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Short History Of Nearly Everything; A Black Swan Book; Black Swan; Premier's reading challenge Yr 7 - 9
• Author: Bill Bryson
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Black Swan, 2004
• ISBN: 0552997048, 9780552997041
• Length: 686 pages
• Subjects: History / General; Science / Applied Sciences; Science / Essays; Science / General