A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.98 You Save: $9.01 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.99 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of A Short History of Nearly Everything
Book Review: I now feel like I know a little bit about nearly everything
Summary: 5 Stars
Bill Bryson is by no means an expert on most of the topics discussed in his book, but he has clearly researched and polled the world's leading authorities and summed it all up for us in this very readable and often humorous story of natural history, one of my favorite subjects. From the formation of the universe and our solar system, to plate tectonics and the elements, to cells and the rise of life and beyond, it reads much like a novel and is easily digestible in small portions. The book's introduction also contains what has become one of my favorite memorable quotes:
"Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you."
You can hardly help but feel pretty darn special in this universe.
Book Review: Another Bill Bryson?
Summary: 5 Stars
A Walk in the Woods
For those whose first introduction to Bill Bryson was "A Walk in the Woods" and the somewhat similarly light-hearted trip around continental USA in his mother's '84 (I think) Chevette, starting in Des Moines (to which, it seems to me, Bryson is unkind), "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is a major change in the course of his writing. It is a wonderfully fresh view of, yes, everything that goes into this massive miracle that is life and this universe (these multiverses is perhaps a better term) in which we find ourselves. Starting with an introduction which for me was ample reason to buy the book, he treats successively all of the major aspects of "everything" from Big Bang to evolution of man.
Bryson is quick to assert his own lack of science training, but that may be the key to the book's capacity to capture essential features of "everything." If he was short on science background, he was diligent in seeking support from excellent sources for this book. As an engineer who spent most of his professional life working in the field of nuclear and particle physics, I found it delightful, and have given copies to many close friends and relations. I think it's a great reference to, yes, everything that's basic to everything!
Book Review: A wonderful book full of wit, biographies and real science
Summary: 5 Stars
I have a fair understanding of many scientific concepts and hesitated reading this book because I loved Bryson's other books and didn't want to be disappointed. I thought for sure that covering, well, the history of nearly everything in one book was sure to be too much for anyone to handle and after all Bryson is not a scientist.
I was wrong. Not only is each and every subject genuinely intriguing this is a scientific book in any proper sense of the word. Bryson sets out to explain how scientists came about discovering, say, tectonic faults, like the one that runs down the middle of the Atlantic. In so doing he shows how evidence must speak for itself and consensus can and often is wrong. His stories are with vivid biographies of the many scientists
Chapter after chapter Bryson presents a story full of characters and surprising facts with true wit and humor. The chapters are not dense but are still filled with such remarkable descriptions and historical events that leave the reader with bright images in the imagination and an enthusiasm for science. For example, Bryson describes a time when the Earth was one big ice encrusted snowball. How did it get that way? How did it change? How could life, any life, possibly survive that? After reading the book I listened to the audio version which I can also highly recommend
Book Review: A wonderful blend of scientific inquiry and human interest
Summary: 5 Stars
Bill Bryson's narrative is as much about the follies and foibles of scientists and observers past and present as it is about the enigmatic history of the natural world which their human eyes have sought to uncover. This backdrop alone make this wonderful story more informative and engaging than any dogmatic high school or science textbook I have ever had to read and showed me just how truly awe-inspiring the expanse of Creation is. But at the same time, the more I read Bryson's book, the more the admonition of C.S. Lewis sunk into my mind about confusing reading for religious discipleship with reading to stay informed about the world around us. Wrote Lewis:
"Science is in continual change and we must try to keep abreast of it. We may mention such things; but we must mention them lightly and without claiming that they are more than 'interesting.' Sentences beginning "Science has now proved" should be avoided. If we try to base our apologetic on some recent development in science, we shall usually find that just as we have put the finishing touches to our argument science has changed its mind and quietly withdrawn the theory we have been using as our foundation stone."
Bryson's tapestry of human interest stories interwoven into the epic history of scientific discovery eloquently bears this out.
Book Review: One of the best summaries of scientific history in generalized form
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're wanting to learn as much condense scientific information as you can in the smallest scrunched up pieces possible, this is almost as good as it gets. From everything to the very start - the big bang, to how life could have started - to the latest scientific information of the release date of the book. It's a few years old, so it's slightly out of date (information such as Pluto not being a planet, but even back then, as the book mentions, people didn't think it should be a planet), but it hardly hurts. Even with some information being old, it's still excellent. There's no other book you can truly compare this to if you're looking for a briefing on the entire history of science through all of mankind's existence.
There is only one thing in the book that did truly bother me. It makes no mention of Tesla, not a single one, even when going on to subjects that revolve around things he himself invented, or at least contributed to. I'm sure there's many other things the book doesn't go over - it's supposed to be brief, after all, but I think it's fairly obvious you should mention him when you talk about the exact things he created. AC electricity, radio, a special type of X-ray and many more.
Other than that, I have no problem and highly recommend this to everyone. READ THIS BOOK.