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  • 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.

    

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

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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

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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• humorsciencekindlenon-fictionCDBig Bang to the rise of civilizationcomprehensiongeologyhuman knowledgepaleontology
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