A Short History of Nearly Everything 1st Edition

by Bill Bryson (Author)

2,764 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0767908177

ISBN-10: 9780767908177

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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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Editorial Reviews

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

From Publishers Weekly

As the title suggests, bestselling author Bryson (In a Sunburned Country) sets out to put his irrepressible stamp on all things under the sun. As he states at the outset, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. "This is a book about how it happened," the author writes. "In particular 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." What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Bryson relies on some of the best material in the history of science to have come out in recent years. This is great for Bryson fans, who can encounter this material in its barest essence with the bonus of having it served up in Bryson's distinctive voice. But readers in the field will already have studied this information more in-depth in the originals and may find themselves questioning the point of a breakneck tour of the sciences that contributes nothing novel. Nevertheless, to read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking for most readers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 560 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books; 1 edition (May 6, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780767908177
ISBN-13: 978-0767908177
ASIN: 0767908171
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.7 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 2,764 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Science & Scientists
- #19 in Books > Science & Math > Essays & Commentary
- #31 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural History

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A most unusual but extremely interesting book!

March 18, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

A friend of mine recommended this book knowing that I like science. I'm used to reading about the sciences in single topics. This book surprised me in the amount of effort the author took to go through book after book of different sciences, both old and new, and proceeded to connect the dots into several cohesive stories about our home, planet Earth, and its residents. The biggest surprise is how little we truly know about both and just how much luck was involved that both exist in their present form. This book is an easy read and should be understandable to anyone who has a basic interest in science.

Be prepared though to being overwhelmed because there is a lot of information in this book, with references to other works. This book is best read in sections allowing yourself some time to think about what you have learned; and I'm sure you are going to learn at least a few things.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to understand what an amazing place our planet is and life that exists on it.

90 people found this helpful

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Pictures Enhance

February 10, 2017

Verified Purchase

I read the hardcover version first, all the while wishing there were pictures, diagrams, maps, etc. I then heard of this illustrated version and ordered it right away. This adds so much to the text. Written in Bryson's easy, slightly ironic style, this book tackles subjects that are often difficult to fully grasp. Great fun and much improved with pictures!

30 people found this helpful

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A Short History of Life

December 1, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Well written and entertaining this is not a textbook, rather Bryson attempts to create a story. The story of Earth and the people who made the critical advancements. The story of Marie Curie, Einstein, Darwin. This is a book that would make Carl Sagan proud.
The book is organized into 6 parts: Lost in the Cosmos; the Size of the Earth; A New Age Dawns; Dangerous Planet; Life Itself; and The Road to Us.
The first part: Lost in the Cosmos is about the big bang and the elemental beginnings of the Universe. Part 2 The size of the Earth discusses the early attempts to determine the size of the Earth in the 17th century. Part 3 A New Age Dawns is about is about Einstein’s universe and the atom and plate tectonics. Part 4 Dangerous Planet is about the interior of the planet and what lies below the surface. Chapter 5 Life Itself is the largest section comprising 161 pages. It covers the rise of life beginning after the formation of the Earth up through the Cambrian explosion. The chapter also discusses Darwin’s work on Evolution. The final chapter The Road to Us is about the rise of humans.

My only issue with the book is that is a bit dated. The history sections are great, but the discussion on current events and science are out of date. This book needs an update.

27 people found this helpful

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Humanity's bedtime story

April 21, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I've owned this book in three versions: big and illustrated, paperback (when I left the big one with my ex-wife) and Kindle (when I realised I never wanted to be unable to open this book). I've read it twice and I open it every now and then, on my phone or Paperwhite, sometimes to remind me of something I enjoy knowing and feel the bursting pride of being a participant in humanity's great journey and sometimes to just escape the world outside and be soothed listening to the telling of a favourite story like a child at bedtime.
It’s short – although it’s actually quite long, but Bryson writes so fluidly. It’s a history – Bryson tells us what he knows or believes happened, but doesn’t hesitate to point out what he doesn’t know. It’s nearly everything – okay it’s really not nearly everything but it gets into astronomy, Neanderthals and volcanoes. Some information may have been revised in the decade since the book went into print and some science may eventually be proved shaky, but I have not come across a better rough guide to essential human knowledge.

19 people found this helpful

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Nearly the Best Book I Have Ever Read

December 19, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I have just completed Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” for the second time. I am quite certain it will not be my last reading. I cannot think of any other single-volume book I have ever read that was as informative, entertaining, and broad in scope as this classic. Not having excelled in science, nor been much interested in it when I was younger, this gem is a massive refresher course on everything I ever learned about science, and then some.

Bryson moves seamlessly from one sweeping topic to the next with great ease. Whether he is expounding upon thermodynamics, paleontology or cosmology, he helps us to grasp, to the extent that seems possible, the interrelatedness of all physical phenomona. He is particularly skillful at putting into perspective concepts of size and dimension within the universe, whether mind-bogglingly vast expanses or minuscule marvels of life’s building blocks. He not only teaches us what is known, but humbles us by emphasizing how much we do not know.

Bryson also brings us biographical sketches of the greatest names in science as only an enormously talented humorist could do. Intellectual giants like Newton, Einstein, and many others, are brought to us with all their eccentricities. So many brilliant individuals were quite odd, which makes them much more human and accessible to the Bryson’s reader.

There is also a moral underpinning to Bryson’s book which becomes most evident in the final chapter. Our species has, in essence, become the extinction event for so many others with which we have shared the planet. Beginning with the unsuspecting and gentle dodo bird, Bryson outlines how we have systematically brought about the termination of thousands of creatures, intentionally or through ignorance. This sobering reality makes one a bit more respectful of current efforts to save endangered species.

No species, and indeed no human being, is anything other than a miracle of chance, a reality in which Bryson rejoices from his opening chapter. He congratulates each of us for surviving the cut and coming into existence against all odds. His book is humbling and thought-provoking, leaving one with a sense of awe at the grandeur of, well, nearly everything.

14 people found this helpful

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