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A Short History of Nearly Everything |  | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Broadway
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $2.82
as of 11/8/2009 05:36 CST details
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Seller: _beaglebooks_
Rating:  707 reviews
Sales Rank: 511
Media: Paperback
Pages: 560
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 076790818X
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780767908184
ASIN: 076790818X
Publication Date: September 14, 2004
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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Showing reviews 1-5 of 707
 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.
A Great Bed-Time Read November 6, 2009
Pokeanemone (Singapore)
Someone criticized this book for including too much factoids about the personal lives and squabbles between scientist, about the little idiosyncracies that many of the world's greatest scientist had.. but I personally found it very interesting and enlightening. How nice to know that these great scientist type figures are human too. And how much more interesting to read about who they were as real people with flaws and quirks and foibles, rather than just as great minds.
I felt that this book was a great companion for me in my many nights of insomnia... at 4am in the morning.. when i would normally have been scratching the walls with frustration from not being able to sleep, i found myself chuckling away at Brysons humorous and pithy insights. Reading this book has really increased my wonder for the universe and my understanding of how small we human beings really are in the scope of life itself! He makes excellent analogies that I will probably still remember even 30-40 years down the road.
Terrific! October 27, 2009
D. D. Burlin
This was a fantastic book. Mr. Bryson has an inquiring mind, and the ability to dig deep into scientific subject matters, yet make them accessible to a lay person. I'm really looking forward to buying the Really Short History to read to my kids. Fascinating stuff! More please!
 Not About Science, Rather About Personal Drama of Scientists October 24, 2009
Iaurlathron
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is not about science. It is about the personal baby mama drama of scientists. Few to no words are actually devoted to explaining discoveries, and when Bryson does talk about actual science he often gets it wrong or gives bad emphases. For every word on actual science he spends 10 words talking about feuds, marriages, business ventures, and basically on trying to be funny.
The book does not live up to its title or its jacket. This is a softball, lazy way to talk about the history of science that has already been done countless times before precisely because it is so easy to do. Most if not all of his material is derivative and can be found in other, better books that came before him.
Thoroughly disappointing, I won't be wasting my energy reading anything from Bill Bryson ever again.
Bottom line: This is not science, this is relationship drama.
A great book of knowledge October 24, 2009
Larry K. Milton
The forward of this book explains why it was written. At the same time it seems to explain a lot of what is wrong with our educational system. A must read for anyone who would like to increase their understanding of many simple but ignored facts. But, if you think ignorance is bliss, leave this one alone.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 707
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