bill bryson a short history of nearly everything review

Of course, that’s not what Bryson delves into here, but it’s scientific things like that. There are so many things that I use and take for granted that I know very little about it’s scary how unknowledgeable I am about computers, the Internet, and cars, to name a few examples. It’s paradoxes like these that intrigue me and many others and that Bryson attempts to explain to the layman in this book.Īs he points out, there are a lot of questions that we feel like we ought to know the answer to, and feel ashamed of actually asking. But to us it seems obvious that there must have been something around that little space. In the very beginning of the book, Bryson discusses the fact that what became the universe was once smaller than a proton. The universe’s age, for example, and how it got to be that way. There are so many statistics, so many facts, that are nearly impossible for the human brain to comprehend. A Short History of Nearly Everything is such a fascinating book, mainly because the universe is such a fascinating place. Of course, this book isn’t really a history of “nearly everything”, but it sure is an entertaining and absorbing account of the universe’s beginnings, and how we as humans have come to partly understand the unfathomably large and wondrous world around us. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.” A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropol ogists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps.

Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. “In Bryson’s biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand - and, if possible, answer - the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

Bill bryson a short history of nearly everything review