has ALL you need!

A community for book lovers to create their own bookshelves, share and explore books.

Google Preview

• .

  • 

  • Call me a snob but a science book by a travel writer? Every 5 minutes I mumbled to myself: I'll have to check the reference. I never really did because the prose is so engrossing that I didn't want to break the flow. But I simply couldn't completely trust Bill Bryson.

    The other day I was readi ... Continue

    Call me a snob but a science book by a travel writer? Every 5 minutes I mumbled to myself: I'll have to check the reference. I never really did because the prose is so engrossing that I didn't want to break the flow. But I simply couldn't completely trust Bill Bryson.

    The other day I was reading the chapter about the evolution of Homo sapiens. Bryson said that the diversity of the human genome is so small that an average community of chimps has larger genetic variation than the entire human race. I was like, really? So I turned to the back and found a reference to a report (not a research paper) in Nature. Impressive. I didn't expect that from a travel writer.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― pyridine said on Nov 8, 2009 about the Audio Cassette edition| Add your feedback

• .

  • 

  • 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.

    

    Is this helpful?

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

• .

  • 

  • 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).

    

    Is this helpful?

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

Groups with this in collection

Malaysian Bookworms (56)

Biblical/Theological Bibliophiles (187)

Historical Fiction Lovers (150)

Science and Nature (138)

• humorsciencekindlenon-fictionCDBig Bang to the rise of civilizationcomprehensiongeologyhuman knowledgepaleontology
• See all (26)