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.
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Amazon.com Review
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
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 like drinking out of a fire hose ( dickst )
Great book with broad coverage of history and science. not a quick read. You need to have your brain awake and engaged while reading.
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Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson narrates a brief yet epic journey of everything from the nothingness of which the universe sprang, to the development of technologies that only a handful of people on our planet understand in one of his best-selling books, A Short History of Nearly Everything. From the top of the world's tallest mountains to the bottom of the deepest petrie dish, Bryson tells the tale of nearly every event that has shaped the universe and the people that unlocked those mysteries. By rejecting the standard stale textbook format, Bryson has assembled a collection of stories that weave together to tell the tale of how we, and everything else, came to be. This book is an easy and interesting read for those who have ever questioned the intricacies of our world, wanted answers, but was unwilling to sift through college textbooks for them.
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 Decent overview of the sciences
This is a good overview of the fundamentals of science. It meanders through astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, geology, and paleontology and is very well written. Through Bryson's style, you can tell that he enjoys the subject matter. The "History" part of the title refers to both history in the sense of the universe, but also the history of the bright individuals and their insights that have allowed us to know that history.
What makes this book distinct is that Bryson was not too long ago in the reader's position (i.e. learning the basics of the sciences) and thereby rarely omits something pertinent to understanding, and his enthusiasm is still fresh and obvious; both of which are a welcomed change from classical science writing. Unfortunately, his lack of expertise leads to the occasional oversimplification, exaggeration, and falsehood- but understandably (and forgiveably) so.
In the regrettable trade off between expertise and comprehensibility, this settles on the "comprehensible" side of the spectrum. If that's what you're looking for, you'll find it here.
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ALMOST EVERYTHING
It's a tough call trying to squeeze earth's history into approximately 450 pages, but Bill Bryson has done it. With his trademark gentle humour and a focus on making even the most complex subjects (such as the nature dark matter and our evolution from chimp to Homo sapien) easy to grasp, Bryson has created a thoroughly readable and more importantly, enjoyable, book.
I am no science whiz, and I will freely admit that there were certain topics that confused me or just didn't hold my attention (for example, I'm not particularly interested in the nature of clouds). Yet despite this, there was so much that I learnt from this book.
This really is a fascinating read, so if you're interested in learning a little more about this amazing planet we call home, `A Short History of Nearly Everything' will keep you captivated for hours.
Zara Stevens
Boy Meets Girl: A Pocketful of Wedding Stories
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Entertaining and funny introduction to a lot of science fields
This book is highly recommendable, probably one of the best science books for lay people I have read and definitely the most funny one. It is an account of a lot of topics, from the big-bang, the truly big numbers of the universe, life on earth (microorganisms that live in extreme conditions for example at very hot temperatures), the great extinctions, the meassuring of key distances of the earth, global warming, particle physics, genetics, fossils, volcanoes, Yellowstone, electromagnetism, darwinism, geology, etc. It is really about nearly everything, written in an entertaining and comprehensible way. The book is full of scientific anecdotes, amazing facts, funny comments and much more.
The only drawback I found in this book is that, although the author made several references to other books in each field of study, he made them in such a way that he discouraged me from reading further about these topics (I don't know why, normally I finish a book and I already want to read something the author suggested). Fortunately I had already read The Seven Daughters of Eve, otherwise I wouldn't have done it, since the author's critic was not very encouraging. After reading the part on particle physics, I decided that this was nothing for me, since although this chapter was interesting, I did not feel like reading more about dozens of particles with strange names. I am glad I also started reading other books about it. So although the book is an excellent introduction to a lot of topics, I didn't feel like diving deeper into anyone.
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