A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bill BrysonEdition: Kindle Edition
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Kindle eBook
Published: 2003-05-06
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of A Short History of Nearly Everything
Book Review: Had I Only Known Then
Summary: 5 Stars
Now at age 60, if only I had textbooks like this in college I may not have failed physics at RIT being that math was never my strong suit. For the first time in my life I have a basic understanding of what an atom is! I would have hung tough with physics and chemistry and invested the time and effort beyond the equations if it meant that I may have eventually stumbled onto an earth shaking discovery.
What fascinated me the most was how some of the most important scientific discoveries were made by uneducated illiterate lay people only to have their ideas and concepts usurped by the day's greatest egotists. I just mentioned to my wife a short time ago that maybe the reason for the current wild swings in climate, i.e. amplified storm intensities, mega-earthquakes, record snow in the mid-Atlantic, etc. is because the degree tilt of the Earth's axis is off the "norm" by a degree or so... our molten core must really be rocking, and that Chilean earthquake was a real punch in the planet's gut... and I'm no scientist. Had I had any sense of mathematics I'd probably be refining macular repair procedures at John's Hopkins. Hey, you never know.... Thanks for the inspiration but I wish I was 20 again!
Summary of A Short History of Nearly Everything
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.
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
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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