A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Publisher: Black Swan
Year: 2004
ISBN: 9780552997041
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, Bryson, Doctor of Letters of the University of Leicester, 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.
February 2nd, 2011 at 1:48 pm
This was a thoroughly brilliant read for me. It was a few years ago, so I cannot remember all of the superb detail, but a few passages stick in my mind.
Bryson manages, with seeming ease, to develop a friendly relationship with the reader as if simply telling a mate about all of these amazing things that have happened in history. I am still perplexed at how he has packed so much knowledge into his chapters without boring the reader.
I’m not much of a leisure reader but this is one book I must recommend to anyone on any science course, to widen your knowledge and peak your interest in all of the sciences.
January 4th, 2011 at 3:38 am
Really a good read.
November 27th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Another nice review from John Dupuis (ScienceLibrarian) here: http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2010/11/from_the_archives_3.php
November 14th, 2010 at 6:57 am
By the time I’d finished reading the opening scene of Notes from A Small Island, I was hooked on Bill Bryson’s writing. And that’s not to mention the time I was nearly thrown off a plane due to laughing so much at The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Consequently, while a huge fan, I never though of Bryson as a science writer. But Bryson’s clear, straightforward style of writing is ideally suited to explaining the complexities of science in an enjoyable and accessible way.
A 600 page tour though the complexities of science risks descending into a catalog of discoveries, but Bryson avoids this trap by enriching his descriptions of the history of science with many anecdotes about the scientists themselves. I will refrain from comparing any of my colleagues to the Reverend William Buckland, but from Bryson’s description I almost feel I have met him. If you want to know how the mass of the Earth was measured, why you shouldn’t bother to read James Hutton’s master work, who advised Darwin to forget about evolution and write about pigeons, or a thousand more science anecdotes, this is the book for you. Pub quiz anyone?
November 12th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Great book!