Hardcover, 544 pages
English language
Published Nov. 8, 2003 by Broadway Books.
Bill Bryson is one of the worlds most beloved and bestselling writers. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journeyinto the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer. 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. 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. This is, in short, a tall order.
To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the worlds most profound scientific minds, living and dead. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemisty, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if there isnt …
Bill Bryson is one of the worlds most beloved and bestselling writers. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he takes his ultimate journeyinto the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer. 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. 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. This is, in short, a tall order.
To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the worlds most profound scientific minds, living and dead. 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. His interest is not simply to discover what we know but to find out how we know it. 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?
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. 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. Science has never been more involving, and the world we inhabit has never been fuller of wonder and delight.
This is a great book. I wish more science teachers read this and took into consideration how powerful a big picture narrative can be when it combines the advances of science with the whimsical human history that lies behind it.
A good general overview of the history of the discoveries of our planet. Having read other works of primary sources that covered some of this book's subject matter, I found that the information and/or intonation can, at times, be troublingly dubious, but it does have a great narrative, and I recommend it if you're interested in a quick overview of the history of earth's sciences.
This book is an excellent tour-de-force through all of science. It is told well, it has great scope -- it truly impressed me.
1) ''At McGill University in Montreal the young New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford became interested in the new radioactive materials. With a colleague named Frederick Soddy he discovered that immense reserves of energy were bound up in these small amounts of matter, and that the radioactive decay of these reserves could account for most of the Earth's warmth. They also discovered that radioactive elements decayed into other elements---that one day you had an atom of uranium, say, and the next you had an atom of lead. This was truly extraordinary. It was alchemy, pure and simple; no one had ever imagined that such a thing could happen naturally and spontaneously.''
2) ''At all events, thanks to the work of Clair Patterson by 1953 the Earth at last had an age everyone could agree on. The only problem now was it was older than the universe that contained it.''
3) ''Yet we …
1) ''At McGill University in Montreal the young New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford became interested in the new radioactive materials. With a colleague named Frederick Soddy he discovered that immense reserves of energy were bound up in these small amounts of matter, and that the radioactive decay of these reserves could account for most of the Earth's warmth. They also discovered that radioactive elements decayed into other elements---that one day you had an atom of uranium, say, and the next you had an atom of lead. This was truly extraordinary. It was alchemy, pure and simple; no one had ever imagined that such a thing could happen naturally and spontaneously.''
2) ''At all events, thanks to the work of Clair Patterson by 1953 the Earth at last had an age everyone could agree on. The only problem now was it was older than the universe that contained it.''
3) ''Yet we are talking about several hundred thousand types of protein, perhaps a million, each unique and each, as far as we know, vital to the maintenance of a sound and happy you. And it goes on from there. A protein to be of use must not only assemble amino acids in the right sequence, but then must engage in a kind of chemical origami and fold itself into a very specific shape. Even having achieved this structural complexity, a protein is no good to you if it can't reproduce itself, and proteins can't. For this you need DNA. DNA is a whiz at replicating---it can make a copy of itself in seconds---but can do virtually nothing else. So we have a paradoxical situation. Proteins can't exist without DNA, and DNA has no purpose without proteins. Are we to assume then that they arose simultaneously with the purpose of supporting each other? If so: wow.''
4) ''But it is worth remembering, before we move on, that all of these evolutionary jostlings over five million years, from distant, puzzled australopithecine to fully modern human, produced a creature that is still 98.4 percent genetically indistinguishable from the modern chimpanzee. There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.''
5) ''If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here---and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
We have arrived at this position of eminence in a stunningly short time. Behaviorally modern human beings---that is, people who can speak and make art and organize complex activities---have existed for only about 0.0001 percent of Earth's history. But surviving for even that little while has required a nearly endless string of good fortune.
We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a good deal more than lucky breaks.''
It was well liked all around. Carolyn read it once and nearly finished it a second time. Bruce read it four times. Jenna picked it up and read random chapters from time to time. The humor was appreciated (although sometimes the glibness was distracting). He made the science pretty clear, with analogies and tricks to visualize the vast expanses of time and distance involved. There was wonderment at how much he managed to cram into the book, and on how he decided what to leave out. (There's a suspicion that he only picked the most colorful characters to give antedotes about - or maybe he just picked the most colorful antedotes.)
Im absolutely mystified at the popularity of this book. I found it tedious that it spent more time talking about the controversy around things than the things themselves. Also find Bryson's chatty, sophmoric writing style annoying. Pales in comparison to anything written by Simon Winchester.
