A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

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On one occasion my six year old interrupted to put forward his idea of moving continents ("like a jigsaw") a whole two pages before plate tectonics were described! I was amused to find this "really short" version of it, and it's super-super-abridged (I mean, the original is 500+ pages and this one is less than 200 and with pictures) but it's still packed with lots of useful and interesting information and it really does cover nearly everything, from the beginning of the universe up until what we're doing to our planet now, it's a hell of a ride.

In the 20th century we entered a “century of science where many people wouldn’t understand anything and no one understand everything. Still I’m glad I read the book and it gave me some interesting facts to dish out in conversations so I can’t say it was time wasted.Los humanos conductualmente modernos llevamos por aquí sólo un 0,0001 % más o menos de la historia de la Tierra…, casi nada, en realidad, pero incluso existir durante ese breve espacio de tiempo ha exigido una cadena casi interminable de buena suerte. Ook hun karakter, anekdotes en hun onderzoek wordt op een toegankelijke manier beschreven ook geschikt voor niet-wetenschappers. I started this book primarily because the completeist in me wanted to tick one off in completing the Bill Bryson set of books (I have one more to go). Zo kun je er bijvoorbeeld achterkomen dat de opa van Darwin Josiah Wedgwood was van het bekende servies bedrijf Wedgwood. The illustrations in the book were gorgeous though and I found most of the time when I was getting annoyed with the info dump I was receiving the images on the page could help to make up for it.

My sense is that adults who possess passing knowledge and experience with the subject matter will benefit more than middle school readers without background. It’s a slightly troubling fact that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you. As the name says, it covers everything from cosmology to evolution, in a fantastic way that even children can understand in a way that makes sense. Young readers, the intended audience, would also derive benefit from many of the discussions, while many others would likely leave them clueless due to the truncated explanations, for each topic is relegated to two-page spread with much of the space dedicated to illustration.

The idea of lots of startled cars and people falling off the edge of that sudden cliff (and 4,000 miles is a pretty long way to fall) was what grabbed him in the beginning, but gradually his attention turned to what the picture was trying to teach him: namely that Earth’s interior is made up of several different layers of materials, and at the very centre is a glowing sphere of iron and nickel, as hot as the Sun’s surface, according to the caption. In The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson's hilarious first travel book, he chronicled a trip in his mother's Chevy around small town America.

It's a bunch of short writings on different topics (how the universe formed, how we know the weight of the earth, etc. And of course Google is always there, there's no excuse to be uninformed and/or anti-science nowadays. Curiously, this little wonder does leave you feeling that one person truly can make a difference -- whether for good or evil.In this book, Bryson takes his vast knowledge and wealth of life experience, and condenses and simplifies it into language which is considerably more readable to children. A Short History of Nearly Everything by American-British author Bill Bryson is a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject.

Everyone needs more understanding of the world around us and the history of science is sadly neglected in our schools ('much more important than the history of monarchs). A Short History of Nearly Everything was lauded with critical acclaim, and became a huge bestseller. Uncover the mysteries of time, space and life on earth in this extraordinary book - a journey from the centre of the planet, to the dawn of the dinosaurs, and everything in between.Bill Bryson wrote this book because he was dissatisfied with his scientific knowledge—that was, not much at all. Estimates range from three million to 200 million species, but it’s possible that as many as 97 per cent of the world’s plant and animal species may still await discovery.