A Short History of Nearly Everything

Awards:   Winner of Descartes Prize for Science Communication 2005 Winner of Descartes Prize for Science Communication 2005.
Author:   Bill Bryson ,  Bill Bryson
Publisher:   Penguin Random House Children's UK
Edition:   Abridged edition
ISBN:  

9780552150729


Publication Date:   28 October 2003
Format:   Audio  Audio Format
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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A Short History of Nearly Everything


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Awards

  • Winner of Descartes Prize for Science Communication 2005
  • Winner of Descartes Prize for Science Communication 2005.

Overview

Bill Bryson's bestseller, now available in audio format. Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely in his own study at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERTHING is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through time and space he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, such as the painfully shy Henry Cavendish, who worked out important conundrums including how much the earth weighed, but failed to report many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye- opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bill Bryson ,  Bill Bryson
Publisher:   Penguin Random House Children's UK
Imprint:   Corgi Audio
Edition:   Abridged edition
Dimensions:   Width: 13.80cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 14.00cm
Weight:   0.158kg
ISBN:  

9780552150729


ISBN 10:   055215072
Publication Date:   28 October 2003
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Audio
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

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Reviews

'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide who loves his patch and is desperate to share its delights with us' -- Peter Atkins The Times 'A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again' -- William Hartston Daily Express 'Brims with strange and amazing facts...destined to become a modern classic of science writing' -- Ed Regis New York Times Book Review 'It deserves to sell as many copies as there are protons in the full stop that ends this review (at least 500,000,000,000).' -- Craig Brown Mail on Sunday 'The very book I have been looking for most of my life...Trunkloads of information, amazing stories and extraordinary personalities' -- Christopher Matthew Daily Mail


'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide who loves his patch and is desperate to share its delights with us' -- Peter Atkins * The Times * 'A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again' -- William Hartston * Daily Express * 'Brims with strange and amazing facts...destined to become a modern classic of science writing' -- Ed Regis * New York Times Book Review * 'It deserves to sell as many copies as there are protons in the full stop that ends this review (at least 500,000,000,000).' -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * 'The very book I have been looking for most of my life...Trunkloads of information, amazing stories and extraordinary personalities' -- Christopher Matthew * Daily Mail *


If you only know Bill Bryson as the author of amusing but essentially lightweight travelogues, prepare to be amazed. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his Sisyphean quest to understand everything that has ever happened, from the Big Bang via creation and evolution to the rise of human civilization. Bryson takes the kind of mind-boggling subjects that bore the pants off the average reader - geology, chemistry, particle physics, DNA - and miraculously renders them not only comprehensible but engaging, even (God forbid) fun. That he does so without ever seeming trite or simplistic says a great deal for Bryson's skill as a writer, and reveals hitherto unimagined depths of seriousness (remember, this is the man who single-handedly invented literary travel-lite). Of course, A Short History is still a travel book, of sorts. It merely replaces the coastal paths of Britain, the Appalachian Trial and the Australian Outback with the vast, awe-inspiring landscapes of time and space. It's not surprising, then, that Bryson took three years 'finding saintly, patient experts prepared to answer a lot of outstandingly dumb questions'. As with his other books, Bryson presents a splendid parade of characters, dead and alive, by turns obsessive, competitive, foolish and plain eccentric (like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish, who worked out how much the earth weighed but didn't bother to tell anyone). No doubt some spoilsports and naysayers will query whether there is really anything new in here - to which Bryson has the perfect answer. As the physicist Leo Szilard remarked, apropos his unpublished diary, 'I am going to record the facts for the information of God.... He knows the facts, but He doesn't know this version of the facts.' You would be well advised to familiarise yourself with Bryson's version of events. (Kirkus UK)


Author Information

Bill Bryson's bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent and Notes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. Another travel book, A Walk in the Woods, has become a major film starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson. His new number one Sunday Times bestseller is The Road to Little Dribbling- More Notes from a Small Island. His acclaimed book on the history of science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Society's Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award. He has written books on language, on Shakespeare, on history, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. His last critically lauded bestsellers were At Home- a Short History of Private Life, and One Summer- America 1927 Bill Bryson was born in the American Midwest, and now lives in the UK. A former Chancellor of Durham University, he was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England for five years, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society. Bill Bryson was born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, and grew up there, but spent most of his adult life in Britain. He worked for the Bournemouth Evening Echo, Financial Weekly and The Times, and was one of the founding journalists on the Independent. His books include Mother Tongue and Troublesome Words (revised edition, 2001), both published by Penguin, and the travel books The Lost Continent, Neither Here Nor There, Notes from a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, Notes from a Big Country and Down Under. He now lives in the United States with his wife and four children.

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