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  • I think this will be the book that I will go back to again and again. There were so many interesting facts to learn, and I enjoyed reading about how various scientists discovered new information that often surprised them. I liked reading about William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus in 178 ... Continue

    I think this will be the book that I will go back to again and again. There were so many interesting facts to learn, and I enjoyed reading about how various scientists discovered new information that often surprised them. I liked reading about William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781 and how he wanted to name it after King George III (Georgium Sidus). I also liked learning about prehistoric guinea pigs the size of cows.

    

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• ― krin5292 said on Sep 6, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Excellent! This is a short history of major scientific discoveries through the ages. --- I love listening to this when I fall asleep. On the re-reads (re-listens actually), I don't catch everything because I fall asleep at some point. But I can start wherever I end and not feel lost since it really ... Continue

    Excellent! This is a short history of major scientific discoveries through the ages. --- I love listening to this when I fall asleep. On the re-reads (re-listens actually), I don't catch everything because I fall asleep at some point. But I can start wherever I end and not feel lost since it really is a series of reports on scientific topics and one doesn't depend on the previous one (especially since I have listened to it several times now).

    

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• ― Missmath144 said on Aug 31, 2008 about the Audio Cassette edition| Add your feedback

Bill Bryson is one of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journey–into the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer. It’s a dazzling quest, the intellectual odyssey of a lifetime, as this insatiably curious writer attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. Or, as the author puts it, “…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.” This is, in short, a tall order.

To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the world’s most profound scientific minds, living and dead. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemisty, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if there isn’t some way to render them comprehensible to people, like himself, made bored (or scared) stiff of science by school. His interest is not simply to discover what we know but to find out how we know it. How do we know what is in the center of the earth, thousands of miles beneath the surface? How can we know the extent and the composition of the universe, or what a black hole is? How can we know where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?

On his travels through space and time, Bill Bryson encounters a splendid gallery of the most fascinating, eccentric, competitive, and foolish personalities ever to ask a hard question. In their company, he undertakes a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only this superb writer can render it. Science has never been more involving, and the world we inhabit has never been fuller of wonder and delight.

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• humorsciencekindlenon-fictionCDBig Bang to the rise of civilizationcomprehensiongeologyhuman knowledgepaleontology
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