Book Bearings
A Short History of Nearly Everything
- 592 pages · about 10 hours
- First published 2003
- 57 editions
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1 About this book
A Short History of Nearly Everything, published in 2003, is the travel writer Bill Bryson's attempt to understand how we know what we know about the universe and ourselves. Dissatisfied with how little science he had taken in at school, he set out to read and to question scientists, and the book tells the story from the Big Bang and the size of the cosmos, through atoms and particles and the age and workings of the Earth, to the rise of life and of modern humans. Along the way he tells how each discovery was made and by whom, and considers the hazards, such as a meteorite strike, that the planet still faces.
- Science
- Science, popular works
- Humor
- Philosophy
- Popular science
- Origin
- Life
- Travel
2 What to expect
A general history of science for non-scientists, from the Big Bang to the origins of human beings, by a writer best known for travel books. Bryson explains physics, geology, chemistry and biology in plain language and tells the stories of the people behind the discoveries, with a taste for odd characters and feuds. It is long, funny and easy to read, broad more than deep, and some of its science has since been revised.
Good for readers who want: science explained simply, the history of discovery, and an entertaining tour of everything.
3 About Bill Bryson
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Bill Bryson
5 Similar books
- Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
- The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski
- Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder
- Wonderful Life the Burgess by Stephen Jay Gould
- Origin Story by David Christian
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn