He writes that science was a distant, unexplained subject at school. In it, he explores time from the Big Bang to the discovery of quantum mechanics, via evolution and geology.īill Bryson wrote this book because he was dissatisfied with his scientific knowledge-that was, not much at all.

It was one of the bestselling popular science books of 2005 in the United Kingdom, selling over 300,000 copies.Ī Short History deviates from Bryson's popular travel book genre, instead describing general sciences such as chemistry, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics. Science has never been more involving, and the world we inhabit has never been fuller of wonder and delight.Ī Short History of Nearly Everything by American author Bill Bryson is a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more so to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject. In their company, he undertakes a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only this superb writer can render it. On his travels through space and time, Bill Bryson encounters a splendid gallery of the most fascinating, eccentric, competitive, and foolish personalities ever to ask a hard question. How do we know what is in the center of the earth, thousands of miles beneath the surface? How can we know the extent and the composition of the universe, or what a black hole is? How can we know where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? His interest is not simply to discover what we know but to find out how we know it. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemisty, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if there isnt some way to render them comprehensible to people, like himself, made bored (or scared) stiff of science by school. To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the worlds most profound scientific minds, living and dead. Or, as the author puts it, how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since. Its a dazzling quest, the intellectual odyssey of a lifetime, as this insatiably curious writer attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journeyinto the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer.

Bill Bryson is one of the worlds most beloved and bestselling writers.

A short history of nearly everything