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A Really Short History of Nearly Everything |  | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $11.69
as of 11/25/2009 01:22 CST details
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 442
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 11.1 x 8.6 x 0.1
ISBN: 0385738102
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780385738101
ASIN: 0385738102
Publication Date: October 27, 2009 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
Enter the world of science as Bill Bryson unmasks the mysteries of the universe.
Did you know that:
⢠Every atom in your body has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to being you?
⢠If you are an average-sized kid, you have enough potential energy inside you to explode with the force of several hydrogen bombs?
AndâWhat happened to dinosaurs? How big is the universe? Why are oceans salty? Is a meteor going to hit us?
Tackling everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bill Brysonâs inimitable storytelling skill makes the why, how, and, just as importantly, the who of scientific discovery entertaining and accessible for young readers.
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| Customer Reviews:
 a really short review of a really good book November 21, 2009
Nico (Brooklyn, NY United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bill Bryson combines great intelligence, expansive knowledge, and a clear, conversational writing style to tell the history of Earth and human civilizations. With wonderful diagrams and illustrations, the book is great for kids and for grown-ups too! One point off for the editors of this edition, who didn't bother translating the book from British to American -- which, considering it's for young readers, was probably not the best choice.
 Great as a primer and overview November 20, 2009
Robert P. Rushinsky (Ohio)
Many things that I've wondered about, such as "how do they know" subjects are excellently covered. This book is targeted at young people mostly but I believe almost everyone will gain knowledge from this book.
At last! An explanation for the world that's EXCITING November 17, 2009
Jesse Kornbluth (New York)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
For almost half of her 7.5 years, our daughter has gone to sleep as her mother delivers a lecture. Not the kind of lecture that follows bad behavior --- our kid just prefers facts to fiction. And so her mother gives a nightly discourse called "Bore Me to Sleep."
Our child knows that no policeman can enter the apartment and take Daddy's computer without a warrant. She knows about the banking crisis (though she prefers to believe that some financial instruments are called "high-heeled munis" and "credit default flops") why the seasons change, how your digestive system works, what fashion designers do, how everything is made of the same atoms, the movement of a bill through the House and Senate --- she's been exposed to a ton of random information.
She could easily be Bill Bryson's child.
Bryson got interested in how the world worked in the 4th or 5th grade, when an illustration in a textbook --- the Earth, with a wedge removed --- caught his interest. It would be nice to report that the book ignited lifelong learning. But it was a standard-issue textbook, not at all exciting. So it wasn't until he was a famous writer (author of a funny memoir called The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and the even funnier A Walk in the Woods) that he wondered again how the world worked.
A few years and 475 pages later, he produced A Short History of Nearly Everything. My wife devoted a summer to it and read every word. I flunked Science repeatedly in school; it's enough for me to know that some important event occurred 500 million years ago.
Now he's created A Really Short History of Nearly Everything, and he's done me --- and you, and every curious kid burdened by a dull textbook or a brain-dead science teacher --- a huge favor. He's taken the greatest hits of his Big Book, trimmed the history so the text is mostly stories, and added illustrations that are variously helpful and amusing.
The result is a book that a curious 9-year-old can get something out of, a 12-year-old can read like a novel, and an adult can devour, blessing Bryson all the while for explaining the history of life on earth in such reader-friendly prose.
Among the cool contents:
The Big Bang was so massive that, in just three minutes, "98 percent of everything there is, or will ever be in the universe, has been produced."
A baby weighing 4 kilograms has about 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in its body.
"The average distance between stars is just over 30 million million [no, that's not a typo] kilometres. Of course it is possible that alien beings travel billions of kilometres to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in the English countryside or frightening some poor guy in a truck on a lonely road in Arizona. But it does seem unlikely."
"Fly from London to New York and you will step from the plane a quinzillionth of a second younger than the friends you left behind."
Weather, geology, space, energy, the atom --- it's all here, and all stunningly interesting. What's not here? Creationism. Bryson not only doesn't deal with it, he doesn't acknowledge it; for him, the world is 4,550 million years old. And evolution isn't a "theory," it's a fact: "The first visible mobile residents on dry land were probably like modern woodlice." (In Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and certain heartland states, a kid who brought this book into school could possibly be in trouble.)
Of greater concern to me than the science/religion schism: "99.99 per cent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us." And people may be "bad news" for other species. Bryson's conclusion: "If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job."
This is not to say that the book ends with a downer. Just the opposite. What drives Bryson is the idea that life is exciting, mysterious and glorious. There's no way to read his book without wanting to keep it going for at least another 60 or 70 years.
A great classroom resource November 2, 2009
Amanda Snow (A Patchwork of Books) (Holloman AFB, NM USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Bill Bryson is not an author I've encountered before, though he's definitely one I'll be going back to. A Really Short History of Nearly Everything was originally published for adults back in 2003 and this particular version has just recently been adapted for kids. I didn't read the original, but this adapted version is awesome!
Though he doesn't really give you a short history of everything in the world, he does hit on main scientific points in history, such as what happened to dinosaurs, why the oceans are salty, how heavy the earth is, chain of life, genetics, planets, weather, atoms, asteroids, etc, etc, etc. Bryson then gives a short, simple explanation which reads very much like a story would, in a nice flowing manner. Not boring and scientific at all, which is a definite plus when it comes to non-fiction books for kids.
Filled with illustrations and photographs that accompany facts that are short and to-the-point. This would be a great resource for a classroom, homeschool setting, or library, especially while teaching different units. A great supplemental material.
Finally, a Bill Bryson book for the rest of us! November 2, 2009
Puneet S. Lamba (Boston, MA)
5 out of 11 found this review helpful
Children's books are the only ones I can actually understand. And they're short enough so that I can finish reading them. I have long been salivating at the thought of reading Bryson's books but have been prevented from doing so due to the high page count. I am a big fan of brevity and can rarely get through anything that's more than 200 odd pages. Hence, my excitement at discovering a 200-page version of Bryson's popular book on science. This book is a whole lot better than any science encyclopedia you might purchase for your children. And you might just find yourself browsing through it more often than your kids.
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