A Short History of Nearly Everything
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4.4 • 203 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century and has sold over 2 million copies.
'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist
'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian
'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times
Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand 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. As a result, A Short History of Nearly Everything reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.
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. First printing 110,000; 11-city author tour. (On sale May 6)
Customer Reviews
Dr Peter Cass
A brilliant book which humbles us in our insignificance yet gives hope. We are in a way immortal and we will meet again in the stars!
Well written for anyone although some scientific knowledge, however basic, complements the book and makes the facts and figures even more mind boggling.
Brillliant
This book is interesting, well written and amazing (in the true sense of the word).
You can easily dip in and out of it and maybe read about dinosaurs one day and the big bang another. Even though it is written for the lay person and is truly absorbing, I personally find it very difficult to hold all the information in my head and often go back to a chapter I've read before.
I wish this book had been around when I'd been at school because it makes the subjects I found dry and boring so much more exciting.
Mr Rankin
Inspiring. I have read this book several times and enjoyed it as much each time. If I had read it aged 14 I'm sure it would have influenced my career.