A Short History of Nearly Everything

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Crown, Sep 14, 2004 - History - 560 pages
3475 Reviews
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One of the world’s most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body 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 Trailwell, most of it. 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 understandand, if possible, answerthe 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.
 

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Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

User Review  - Kamesh Chivukula - Goodreads

A great book on the history off science from a master story teller. After reading this book I was Grief stricken for not choosing science as a career of choice. After reading the paper back, I brought ... Read full review

Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

User Review  - Ankit - Goodreads

So much to learn, so little time. Bill Bryson does a great job of taking us from the origins of the universe, the geology of the Earth, scientific discoveries and how modern human beings came to be ... Read full review

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
LOST IN THE COSMOS
8
TIIE SIZE OF THE EARTII 41
43
IV
186
VI
222
LIFE ITSELF
236
Into the Troposphere
257
The Bounding Main
271
Goodbye to All That
337
The Richness of Being
351
Iamins Singular Notion
399
TH E ROAD TO
419
The Mysterious Biped
435
The Restless
455
Goodbye
469
PART Ill A NEW AGE DAWNS ll?
487

The Rise of Life
289
Small orld
321
lb?
491
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Bill Bryson's bestselling books include A Walk in the WoodsThe Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and A Short History of Nearly Everything (which won the Aventis Prize in Britain and the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award). He was chancellor of Durham University, England's third oldest university, from 2005 to 2011, and is an honorary fellow of Britain's Royal Society.

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