A Short History of Nearly Everything |  | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Random House Audio
List Price: $25.95
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Seller: internationalbooks
Rating:  711 reviews
Sales Rank: 866449
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0739303104
Dewey Decimal Number: 523.1
EAN: 9780739303108
ASIN: 0739303104
Publication Date: May 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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
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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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 711
 My Desert Island Book November 20, 2009
Nautiknitter (CA)
Bryson's sparkling style cinches this as one of my top 10 books ever. It seems some scientific types are upset that Bryson delves into the lives of scientists making discoveries more than the discoveries themselves. This is his brilliance! If I want to learn everything there is to know about any given scientific discovery (I don't), I can go read the discoverer's undoubtedly dry treatise on it. I'd much rather learn about how this person came to make such a discovery. It's called human interest, which is something Bryson excels at.
 Simple, but Good November 18, 2009
Benaiah Edwards (Monterey, CA USA)
A very curt and well-presented glimpse of what science has taught us. Recommend this for any non-scientist who is curious and all young and aspiring scientists.
Very enjoyable! Absorbing topics, well written November 18, 2009
S. Eggers (Seattle, WA)
Bill Bryson is an incredibly engaging and charming writer, so he could have written a book of carpet samples and made it interesting. Combine his talents with a smorgasboard of science and history -- all about where we came from and why we think we know what we do -- and you get an irresistible book.
My only complaint was that my interests weren't *exactly* aligned with his, so I felt like too much time was spent on taxonomy (classifying everything from animals and rocks to geological epochs) at the expense of more theoretical sciences like physics and biochemistry. "Cosmos" is much more satisfying in that respect. But a perfect alignment of interests can't really be expected in a book of such broad scope, and it was still a lot of fun.
A Must Read November 13, 2009
The Reading Addict
Too many are ignorant of the wonders of scientific developments. Bill Bryson makes the story of our lives a fascinating and enjoyable tale; one from which anyone will gain. His humor and incredibly thorough research makes this book one of the most worthwhile I have read in a long while. It was amazing to find myself laughing out loud during an otherwise thoughtful scientific dissertation. Encourage your students, children and friends to read this.
Required Reading November 7, 2009
Terry P. Rizzuti (Colorado)
This is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read. It should be translated into every language and made required reading in every high school in the world. A supurb piece of work that the author should be proud of.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 711
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