A Short History Of Nearly Everything

Published by Random House UK Audio

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to find out 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.

His challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, 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 about 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, 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House UK Audio
• Release date: Apr 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781407083667

Reviews for A Short History Of Nearly Everything

[Rich Alexander · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very good. Factually very interesting and seamlessly linked . Highly recommendable

[Megan · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Great book but can you PLEASE tell people when books are abridged? I wanted to hear the full version, I wouldn't have wasted my credit otherwise.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

No doubt out of date by now, this book is still packed with information, covering all sorts of physics, biology and chemistry, while being very readable and, often, funny. I especially liked the fact that it took an interest in scientists who had not been properly documented and whose achievements were attributed to others.

Very readable and easy to digest. The information isn't that out of date, and all of it together might be a useful overview of the history of the world. A lot of it I knew, but was pleased to know in more detail.

[comixminx · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very much enjoyed this book. I'd been meaning to look out for it for a while, since going on something of a Bryson bender earlier in the year; and this does not disappoint. Thorough, well-explained, and above all funny, I read out choice bits to my partner while not spoiling him for the inevitable reading of it that he will do later on.

I normally read books pretty quickly, so was more glad than not to find that it was substantial enough to take me a goodish amount of time to get through.

[finalcut_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book really does cover a lot but I'd say it is more of a History of Scientific Discovery than anything else.

Overall, the book left me with more questions than answers because he did cover so much different information. However, Bryson does do a fantastic job of helping make a variety of complicated topics more approachable and understandable. I certainly don't envy the job he had in writing this book and I love to learn.

If you are at all curious about how our world works and our limited understanding of it then you should certainly give this book a read.

[alcracka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Remember high school? No? Then this book is pretty good.

[particle_p · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bryson did an excellent job on this, about as well as any non-expert could hope to do, but because of the sheer breadth of the subjects, he inevitably didn't understand things as well as he needed to explain them properly. The physics section in particular is inadequate, and I recommend finding a science writer like James Gleick or Martin Gardner who has made physics his/her specialty rather than consulting that section. You will get clearer more detailed explanations that way. What Bryson does outstandingly is convey why science is awesome. From a big picture standpoint — which is really what he was aiming for — this book is first rate.

[jenn70-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The science of a lot of stuff, from the universe to bacteria.

[julie10reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As the author states at the outset, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. "This is a book about how it happened," the author writes. "In particular 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." It took more than 18 hours of listening, but I did it! I finished the book! Bill Bryson has been an entertaining and informative walking companion for almost a month. If you want a science book that tells you more than the one--usually apocryphal--anedcote you already know (the apple falling on Newton's head that led to the understanding of gravity), in fact, that tells you a LOT more, this is it. I particularly appreciate Mr. Bryson's skill at explaining recondite scientific truths without condescension and with so much vivid detail that I found myself wishing there was a movie version!Scholars will find the text already out of date (published in 2003) but Mr. Bryson certainly brings the general reader to more than a superficial understanding of the building blocks of science.Note: In detailing the development of our understanding of scientific facts, Bill Bryson writes so authoritatively about what we mistakenly believed to be true BEFORE we realized we were wrong that I get confused!8.5 out of 10. At 544 pages,this is ideally suited to the audiobook format. For anyone who wants to know or understand more about our world from a science perspective.

[sharrona_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrific book, entertaining and yet academic & authentic enough to be worth the time to read it. When I read this I was reminded of James Burke's writings and wonder why science couldn't be taught in school the way these men write. I can't think of anyone to whom I wouldn't recommend it, except those folks who believe the earth is 6000 years old and cannot tolerate thinking outside that box.

[jenners26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUTAs the title says, the book really is a short history of nearly everything. (Of course, that doesn’t make it a short book.) Bryson covers everything from the beginnings of the universe to the formation of planet Earth to how life on Earth began and what makes us us. In typical Bryson fashion (that is to say, conversational, folksy, down-to-earth and with gentle humor), this brick of a book provides a basic primer on everything from physics to geology to paleontology to biology to astronomy to chemistry and everything in between. It was educating and fascinating, as Bryson’s books tend to be. It was, at times, also somewhat chilling when you realize just how miraculous and precarious our existence on this planet really is. So, given that Bryson has written a book about nearly everything, what did I learn from it?SEVEN THINGS I LEARNED WHILE READING THIS BOOKWe are all one. This may sound like a hippie mantra, but Bryson makes the case, over and over again, that everything on Earth (and even the universe) is made of the same basic stuff. For living creatures, the similarities are even more pronounced, with Homo sapiens sharing almost 99% of our DNA with every other living thing on Earth.We (and by “we” I mean the entire human race) are always on the knife-edge of destruction. From the eruption of a supervolcano (like the one sitting right under Yellowstone Park) to the unannounced appearance of a huge meteorite that we would never see coming, Bryson makes the unsettling case that life is always hanging by a thread. After all, mass extinction is the “natural way” of things, and our very very short history of life on Earth will not be an exception. It just depends on what form our extinction will take and whether it will be slow or fast. (Personally, I’d rather never know what hit us.)Some of the biggest mysteries of the Universe are those closest to us. Bryson talks about how little we actually know about the center of our own Earth and the workings of our own bodies. Despite all the scientific knowledge we’ve accumulated, for all we actually know, the middle of the earth could be filled with dwarves or rainbows or ping-pong balls. No one has actually seen it. In addition, exactly how proteins and cells and DNA function are still kind of mysterious.The 1700s and 1800s were awesome times to be a scientist. Throughout the book, Bryson sprinkles in accounts of eccentric gentlemen scientists who basically had the world at their fingertips to explore and figure out. It must have been a heady time, and I found it amazing how much these folks were able to figure out with their relatively crude instruments. Bryson’s accounts of the lives of these various scientists were one of the most enjoyable parts of the book.I am not cut out to understand science beyond the most basic level. Despite Bryson’s ability to clearly convey complex scientific explanation in layperson’s terms, I was still befuddled by much of the information presented in the book. However, I don’t think it is just me. As Bryson says, the scientific numbers used to understand the very big (such as 4.6 x 109) or very small (1.66 x 10-27) are just really beyond our comprehension. When you get into a field like physics, it started to seem like perhaps the physicists themselves don’t really understand what they are talking about. Suffice it to say, I still don’t really “get” the Big Bang and I don’t really comprehend what a quark is.The Big Bang Theory (the TV show) does a pretty good job of tossing around real physics terms. During the section on physics, I was tickled to see quite a few terms (Higgs-Boson particles, Large Hadron Collider) that are regularly referenced on what is fast becoming my favorite TV show—not that I’m any closer to understanding any of it than Penny is.THE BOTTOM LINEReadable, fascinating and with just enough science to make you feel like you’re getting a basic education, A Short History of Nearly Everything is a must read for anyone seeking to better understand the world around them. I was amazed at the various things I learned and awed by the miracle of events that caused us humble humans to come into being. Well done, Mr. Bryson! A great kick-off to my month of non-fiction reading.

[fyrefly98 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Summary: A Short History of Nearly Everything is pretty much exactly what its title says it is (although I bet Bryson would have titled it Life, the Universe, and Everything if Douglas Adams hadn't gotten there first.) People looking for traditional history might be disappointed, however; since the "Everything" reaches back to the big bang, the scale dictates rather a condensed view. Essentially, what this book is is a primer on science - astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. - that attempts to keep everything factually accurate but understandable by laypeople. It also focuses not only on what we know, but on how we figured it out, and the people that did the figuring.Review: I loved this book. Maybe that's not surprising, what with me being a scientist and all, but it was just amazingly, wonderfully, gleefully good. And really, while I knew most of the biology and some of the chemistry and physics that Bryson covers, when it came to a lot of the astronomy and quantum physics and other unfamiliar topics, I was a layperson myself. Within the first few hours of listening, Bryson had already blown my mind a few times, and explained things that I'd always wondered about but never actually formulated into proper questions. For example, a lot of the physical constants of the universe (the strength of gravity, the rate at which helium decays into hydrogen, the bonding properties of carbon, etc.) are very specific, and if they were changed just a fraction, the universe wouldn't be capable of sustaining life. Some people point to this in support of a Creator, a la "Well, who created the law of gravity?" But Bryson mentions a theory that there were (or are) Big-Bang-like events going on all the time, creating universes with random variations on those physical constants, and the reason ours looks like it was uniquely created was that it was the one to work well enough to stick around. Bryson explains it much better than I was just able to, but it, like all the best science, is just so elegant and powerful of an idea that my mind? Was blown.That was one of the biggest revelations in the book, but I definitely learned something just about every minute. Bryson is, on the whole, an exceptionally clear writer, and he's very good about providing metaphors to help readers visualize the very big and the very small. For example, the thickness of the atmosphere is relatively the depth of three coats of varnish would be on a standard desk globe, and if all of the subsurface, rock-eating bacteria were somehow transported to the surface of the Earth, it'd form a layer approximately five feet deep. Even when Bryson was presenting facts I already knew about from my other reading (the origin of white noise, the life of Mary Anning, the early idea that North American mastodons were ferocious predators, the dinosaur wars between Cope and Marsh, etc.), I enjoyed making the connections, and listening to Bryson's dryly funny presentation of the material. This book is a little out of date, of course, but I only really noticed it in a few places (for example, in the book, Pluto's still a planet. Poor Pluto.)The book is only very, very loosely ordered. It goes, more or less, from old to new, from the Big Bang to anthropogenic climate change and extinctions, but with a lot of back-and-forth tangents along the way. Dinosaurs, for example, come up repeatedly, when talking about the age of the earth, the comet that caused the KT extinction, and in the section on vertebrate evolution. However, while the grand organizational structure is rarely clear, each tangent flows smoothly into the next, making the book seem logically organized at the time, if not so much in hindsight. (There's a section in the middle that covers geology, astronomy, epidemiology, and others, that should really be titled "Horrible and Cataclysmic Ways in Which it is Entirely Possible You Will Die".)I did have a few little niggling annoyances with this book. My first is Bryson's profound reluctance to use scientific notation. While I get that he's trying to keep things accessible to the non-scientist, I have a much more intuitive sense of what he means by 10^24 than by a billion trillion trillion. Also, while he's good about reminding us about who people are when they show up in later chapters, he didn't always connect ideas from earlier in the book to later spots where they would be relevant. For example, he covers the idea of an expanding universe pretty early on (in a "what's it expanding into?" section), but then fails to bring up the conclusions of that part when, later on, he mentions red-shift (a phenomenon like the Doppler-effect that lets us tell that distant stars and galaxies are moving away from us). And finally, while Bryson does a fairly good job of decentralizing humans - emphasizing that the universe does not exist to hold the Earth, the Earth does not exist to support life, and that life did not come into existence just to eventually produce humans - he belies that message by putting the section on human evolution at the end, giving the sense that this *was* what it was all leading to. A common problem among almost everybody who writes books on the subject, of course, but Bryson's not immune.But all of those problems are really very minor compared to how much I enjoyed this book. I don't think I've learned more, and enjoyed myself as much in the process, in a very very long time. 4.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Since I don't have the power to make this required reading for everyone, I am going to make it highly, highly recommended reading for everyone. Don't be intimidated by its size - each of the pieces is pretty self-contained - or by the science; Bryson does a wonderful job at explaining everything with clarity and a wryly snarky sense of humor.

[tahoegirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book! I am really interested in science, so I didn't really learn anything new, but I loved the way he explains thing or presents them in a different light. I hope he writes an updated / revised edition soon.

[vvilliam_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An incredible overview of the natural sciences that left me wanting to go to the museum after every chapter. This book should be used in all classrooms, especially to excite readers about science. My only criticism is that it's long (I probably should have taken long breaks between parts) and that it's really a history of Western science. I would have liked to hear more about any non-Western scientific history.

[tlockney_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

While I don't give Bryson 5 stars on everything, I still consider him one of my favorite writers. This book, though, was quite an eye-opener. I have always considered myself inclined towards natural science and the world around me, but Bryson has a way of making things startlingly clear while using his incredible sense of humor. I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels they need a better understanding of the world around them.

[sandsing7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I feel badly giving, what was at times, a very interesting book a score that's the equivalent of an "eh" accompanied with a shoulder shrug, but that's where it falls. A Short History of Nearly Everything was informative, anecdotal, and imbued with Bryson's sometimes witty, sometimes even very funny POV, but in the end it was still dry and read like a textbook.

[polarmath · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book. I really enjoyed following the characters and learning about Florence. Meg finally gets to take her trip to Italy and this book detail about her time there and the time it took for her to get there.

[dickmanikowski · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Stunning overview of . . . just about everything. Starting with a discussion of the birth of the universe, then going into atoms, molecules, and the universe, then focusing on the origin of the earth, and finally going on into the origin of life and the mechanisms of evolution. Bryson presents some really complex subject matter in a highly approachable fashion, interspersing his information with brief portraits of the scientists and inventors responsible for major advances in human knowledge.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As the title promises, this entertaining popular science book does attempt to chronicle the history of nearly everything – the universe, the earth, life and the human species – but what it does particularly well is chronicle the history of science and just how we figured out all this stuff, which leads, inexorably, to the conclusion that we don’t know nearly as much as we like to think we do.

[atreic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was not what I was expecting. I'd bought it under the misapprehension that it was a popular guide to human history, whereas it is actually popular science. And while it is definitely short relative to the amount of material it covers, it is really rather long. It is a whistle stop tour of 1) the universe is very big and expanding and there are stars and the solar system is really big too 2) It's very hard to know how heavy the earth is or how old it is, 3) relativity, quantum, atomic bombs 4) the earth is amazingly fragile, and in lots of danger from volcanoes, comets etc 5) Life is cool, and it all contains DNA, and bacteria are Weird 6) human evolution is interesting and poorly understood. If that sounds like quite a lot, it is. And Bill Bryson, while having a gentle and engaging prose style as always, suffers from two major flaws. The first is that he spends a disproportionate amount of time telling the stories of the people behind the science, rather than the stories of the science itself. If that is your thing you will love this book, but I was reading a big fat non-fiction book to learn things, and I found the science:anacdote ratio annoying. Secondarily, when he does get into the science, he has a really annoying habit of name-dropping a huge number of scientific terms without real explanation, just so he can make the points that a) it's all Really Really Difficult, and b) aren't scientists very clever but very weird with their Big Words. I found this very frustrating - I think most science can be made accessible with a little care, and it just felt lazy.

[kaipakartik_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Quite a fantastic book. Enjoyed it immensely and laughed a lot as well.The blurb mentions it as the finest rough guide to science and I cannot think of a better description.Bill Bryson takes on dry subjects with ease and makes them interesting and even fun.Hand it to a kid. Much better than the dry textbooks that are designed to bore.

[pjeanne_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyed tremendously - really two books in one. First book - "Science For Dummies" which gives laypeople a basic understanding of some of science's biggest and most complex ideas in a fun and accessible way and provides plenty of references to books people may want use for more complete treatment of the topics coveredThe second book is not really a book about science. Science is just just the structure on which a series of entertaining anecdotes about scientists are told.

[jesso13_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love learning about anything and everything (for the most part) and this book was great! It's a great combo of science and history, and a lot more interesting than reading a text book. I really enjoy Bill Bryson's writing style and sense of humor. Enough info to keep those with history or science backgrounds interested, but not overwhelming to those with no background at all.

[eagletusk · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Should be required reading for all humans.

[markgalassi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is an excellent tour-de-force through all of science. It is told well, it has great scope -- it truly impressed me.

[manadabomb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a great book for a nerd. Bryson really does try to cover nealy everything in this book, from The Big Bang theory to dinosaurs to human origins and human cells and DNA. This is definitely not an in-depth book on any of these subjects but it gives you enough of a peek into a everything that you can be prodded into doing more research on your own.Science is a favorite subject for me to read about. There wasn't much of this book that didn't make me a happy camper (except finding out that if you've owned your pillow for more than 6 years, 1/10 of it's weight is live mites, dead mites and mite poop. Guh.). It's written for the layperson, you don't need to be a nerd to appreciate it.As always, Bryson is a fun writer, making even DNA fun and exciting to read about.

[tortoisebook · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bill Bryson has written a very special book here. His 'nearly everything' encompasses how the universe began, how galaxies were formed, the geology of the earth, the evolution of mankind, the wiping out of dinosaurs, volcanoes, earthquakes, ice ages and quantum physics. It explains these concepts in depth and with typical lighthearted, jovial Bryson style and brings science to life. He makes scientists his main characters, describing their eccentricites and foibles and never failing to point out when a Nobel prize is awarded to someone other than the scientist who did all the work. His description of Sir Isaac Newton is memorable - who'd have thought the great man had been so secretive, cantakerous and uncooperative?There are some underlying themes that bring the book together. First that a series of extremely unlikely events has brought the earth to its present state and second how it could so easily be destroyed in an instant. Bryson enjoys titillating us with danger - an asteroid could strike without warning, the glaciers could take over the world, the earth's magnetic field could switch, and don't even think about going to Yellowstone NP.Although this book is lighthearted, it is not a light read. You do have to concentrate and it helps to have a bit of background knowledge and to have listened at school - I did Physics A level half my lifetime ago and it did help to have those dim and distant memories. This book gets some criticism for inaccuracies and its sensationalist style but for me that misses the point. What it has done for me is to fill in a whole raft of gaps in my knowledge of the things I'd resigned myself to never understanding and it has awakened my interest in science. I now click on the science headlines on the BBC news website which I never paid any attention to before and I got all excited this week with The Economist running a leader on man's impact on the geology of earth!If this book has achieved one thing it has made science accessible. So what if Bryson gets some of it wrong, at least now I feel equipped to find out more for myself if I wish.

[tiffwick · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all-time favorite popular science books.

[ariadnearanea · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bill Bryson does science - and it's just what you would expect. Enthusiastic and humorous, and a sort-of travel guide to what we know and how we found it out. Bryson is big on the history of science and scientists, and the human side of things. His emphasis on who did what, and how, and why, and when, does somehow overshadow the actual science part - but, hey, why not? Definitely a good read for non-scientists, and doubles as a doorstop afterwards.

[harpua_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book has been sitting on my shelf for some time now. It's gotten good reviews and was recommended by friends, but it sat on my shelf for over a year before I finally decided to pick it up and read. Well I was pleasantly surprised. Interesting reading, scientific enough to be intriguing, yet easy enough that anyone can get into it without any scientific background. The topics covered by Bryson cover everything from the Big Bang all the way up to today, from the size of the universe, down to the smallest parts of the atom. One thing that did come out in his narrative slightly was an environmental, global warming, humans are destroying the planet message. It was very slight and the content was interesting enough that this didn't bother me greatly. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with little or no knowledge of the science discussed. Scientists may find errors and misconceptions, but it was educational and enjoyable enough.