Maybe that's not surprising, what with me being a scientist and all, but it was just amazingly, wonderfully, gleefully good. It also focuses not only on what we know, but on how we figured it out, and the people that did the figuring. that attempts to keep everything factually accurate but understandable by laypeople. Essentially, what this book is is a primer on science - astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. Summary: A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty much exactly what its title says it is (although I bet Bryson would have titled it Life, the Universe, and Everything if Douglas Adams hadn't gotten there first.) People looking for traditional history might be disappointed, however since the "Everything" reaches back to the big bang, the scale dictates rather a condensed view.
Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
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. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. 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. 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. 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. In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -well, most of it. One of the world’s most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body takes his ultimate journey-into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.
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