I've recently read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything as part of an online bookclub I sometimes take part in. The book had been on my reading list for ages, and since it's recently out in paperback (on 1 June 2004), it seemed the ideal opportunity to give it a go.
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Black Swan - Bill Bryson
What on earth is Bill Bryson doing writing a book of popular science--A Short History of
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Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of t...
Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of t...
Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of t...
Doubleday - Bill Bryson
What on earth is Bill Bryson doing writing a book of popular science--A Short History of
... more
Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of t...
Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of t...
home he can?t contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything 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. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before. 'This most enjoyable of books ...A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide.' The Times Lucid, thoughtful and, above all, entertaining.' The Scotsman
was about ten or eleven years old in America. It had an illustration that captivated him - a cutaway diagram showing Earth's interior as it would look if you cut into it with a large knife and carefully removed about a quarter of its bulk. 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 of it all is a glowing sphere of iron and nickel, which is as hot as the surface of the Sun, according to the caption.And he very clearly remembers thinking: "How do they know that?" Bill's story-telling skill makes the "How?" and, just as importantly, the "Who?" of scientific discovery entertaining and accessible for all ages. In this exciting new edition for younger readers, he covers the wonder and mysteries of time and space, the frequently bizarre and often obsessive scientists and the methods they used, the crackpot theories which held sway for far too long, the extraordinary accidental discoveries which suddenly advanced whole areas of science when the people were actually looking for something else (or in the wrong direction) and the mind-boggling fact that, somehow, the universe exists and, against all odds, life came to be on this wondrous planet we call home.
Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of the processes that created, populated and continue to maintain the vast body of water beneath him.In fact, it dawned on him that "I didn't know the first thing about the only planet I was ever going to live on". The questions multiplied: What is a quark? How can anybody know how much the Earth weighs? How can astrophysicists (or whoever) claim to describe what happened in the first gazillionth of a nanosecond after the Big Bang? Why can't earthquakes be predicted? What makes evolution more plausible than any other theory? In the end, all these boiled down to a single question--how do scientists do science? To this subject Bryson devoted three years of his life, reading books and journals and pestering the people who know (or at least argue about it); and we non-scientists should be pretty grateful to him for passing his findings on to us.Broadly, his investigations deal with seven topics, all of enormous interest and significance: the origins of the universe; the gradual historical discovery of the size and age of the earth (and the beginnings of the awesome notion of deep time); relativity and quantum theory; the present and future threats to life and the planet; the origins and history of life (dinosaurs, mass extinctions and all); and the evolution of man. Within each of these, he looks at the history of the subject, its development into a modern discipline and the frameworks of theory that now support it. This is a pretty broad brief (life, the universe and everything, in fact), and it's a mark of Bryson's skill that he is able to carve a clear path through the thickets of theory and controversy that infest all these disciplines, all the while maintaining a cracking pace and a fairly judicious tone without obvious longueurs or signs of haste. Even readers fairly familiar with some or all of these areas of discourse are likely to learn fromA Short History. If not, they will at least be amused--the tone throughout is agreeable, mingling genuine awe with a mild facetiousness that often rises to wit.One compelling theme that appears again and again is the utter unpredictability of the universe, despite all that we think we know about it. Nervous page-turners may care to omit the sensational chapters on the possible ways in which it all might end in disaster--Bryson enumerates with cheerful relish the kind of event that makes you want to climb under the bedclothes: undetectable asteroid colliding with the earth; superheated magma chamber erupting in your back garden; ebola carrier getting off a plane in London or New York; the HIV virus mutating to prevent its destruction in the mosquito's digestive system. Indeed, the chief theme of this sprightly book is the miraculous unlikeliness, in a universe ruled by randomness, of stability and equilibrium--of which one result is ourselves and the complex, fragile planet we inhabit. --Robin Davidson
(+) it has all topics listed saying which exam board requires which topic... Nice colours and quite simple easily understandable explanations. (-) My experience
Advantages: Accessible introduction to science Disadvantages: Still difficult to understand in parts
I've recently read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything as part of an online bookclub I sometimes take part in. The book had been on my reading list for ages, and since it's recently out in paperback (on 1 June 2004), it seemed the ideal opportunity to give it a go.
I'm familar with Bill Bryson's writing through having read many of the other books he's written, not only the well-known travelogues (Notes from a Small Island, Walk in ... ...he's much more than just a travel writer, but was curious to find out just how he'd manage to deal with scientific theory in a way that remained accessible to "the masses" (ie, me!). Given that the book has just won the Aventis science book prize, I was somewhat dubious, but took heart from the fact that it's been described as the best "Rough Guide" to science ever printed.
The book itself is split into various segments, each dealing with a different ...
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Advantages: A very accessible history of science, wriiten for everyman and everywoman. Disadvantages: If you are without curiosity and humour, forget it.
This is going to be a difficult review because Bill Bryson's book is a like an enormous firework display of 'oohs!' and 'aahs!'. In my opinion it is a unique and extremely successful attempt to bring a very complex and diverse subject into the domain of anyone who is literate and capable of wonder. Did you ever have any of those deep conversations about the universe and infinity when you were young? And did questions like space is big, the universe ... ...magnus opus to you is a quote from his first chapter, How to Build a Universe:
"No matter how hard you try you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming is a proton. It is just way too small.
A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a tiny dib of ink like the dot on this 'i' can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, or rather ...
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Advantages: You won't find a better introduction to Science Disadvantages: Might be a little too much to take in
...around the world. He's gone a bit further with 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. Bryson effortlessly tackles possibly the most sleep-inducing subject: Science.
On face value 'A Short History' -referred to as thus herein- is an introduction to every basic scientific discipline i.e. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology and the subdivisions that come with it. Most people who despise anything remotely scientific -probably due to their endless ... ...but Bryson understands this. With a vast array of information, a dash of wit and a whole smackering of anecdotes Bryson reconstructs the stereotype of the scientific world. The world we think of Boolean operators and stale chalkboards becomes one populated with ridiculous experiments, bickering lunatics, and above all the underlying idea that although we think we know a lot about our world and the stuff surrounding us, we don't really know if any ...
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Advantages: Very detailed, witty Disadvantages: Not that short!
I have been a fan of Bryson's travel writing for years, his wit and observational skills make his books interesting and funny. I expected more of the same from him in this book, and in some respects I got it, but generally I found it a harder read than most of his other stuff. The copy I have is a hardback with 423 pages plus almost a further hundred pages dedicated to notes, bibliography and the index. This made it a bit to bulky to take on journeys ... ...read at home, making for a disjointed reading experience. This is combined with the fact that the subject matter does not always make for easy reading and is somewhat heavier (and not just physically) than his more lightweight travel books. Bryson is an inquisitive person and goes into a great deal of detail in this book, but his observational skills have not been dulled and he is able to discover the absurd and ridiculous where it is apparent (which ...
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Advantages: Interesting development of popular science Disadvantages: Non-mathematical presentation, but that's not necessarily a bad thing
...books of his, 'Notes from a Small Island' and 'The Mother Tongue', are ones I return to again and again. His latest book, one of the longer ones (I was surprised, as most Bryson books rarely exceed 300 pages, and this one weighs in well past 500), is one likely to join those ranks.
Of course, a history of everything, even a SHORT history of NEARLY everything, has got to be fairly long. Bryson begins, logically enough, at the beginning, or at least ... ...story of science together with a gentle description of the science involved – he looks not only at the earliest constructs of the universe (such as the background radiation) but also at those who discover the constructs (such as Penzias and Wilson). A great example of the way Bryson weaves the history of science into the description of science, in a sense showing the way the world changes as our perceptions of how it exists change, is his description ...
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Advantages: Funny, informative and accessible Disadvantages: Short chapters
...manner, with his own foibles being equally honestly portrayed. The results of his journeys are always informative and incredibly funny. He is an exceptionally gifted wordsmith, for example he describes running down a hill when he loses control of his momentum and is unable to stop until he hits something as “Touretts of the feet”. He has also written equally informative and entertaining books on the history and idiosyncrasies of the English language that he loves and so expertly uses, as well as a shorthistory of nearlyeverything, which he thoughtfully called “A shorthistory of nearlyeverything” making it much easier to find in book shops.
BillBryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. A backpacking expedition in 1973 brought him to England where he met his wife and decided to settle. He wrote for the English newspapers The Times...
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Advantages: Entertaining and educational Disadvantages: Some bits are more interesting than others
...of Americanisms, specifically American slang, come from the ‘baby-boomer’ post-war generation. Without them we would not have ‘weirdoes’, ‘creeps’, ‘losers’ and ‘drips’. Well, we would, but we wouldn’t have such colourful terms to describe them! This plethora of new slang came largely from new attitudes and social changes – teenagers and young people now had more disposable income, movies like Rebel Without A Cause and rock n roll music (a term from black Americans, who used it first to describe sex and later dancing) – creating gems such as ‘daddyo’, ‘coolsville’ (and indeed ‘cool’), ‘far out’ and ‘what a drag’.
BillBryson is best known for his travel writing, though the only other book I’ve read by him so far is the brilliant A ShortHistory of NearlyEverything. As with A ShortHistory of NearlyEverything, Made in America is informative...
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Advantages: Very interesting, hysterically funny, extremely readable Disadvantages: Short chapters may not be to everyone's taste
...in a couple of hours-and you'll be sad when it's over.
BillBryson has written seven other books (Notes from a Small Country, Walk in the Woods, A ShortHistory of NearlyEverything, Neither Here Nor There, BillBryson's African Diary, Down Under and Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words) with another 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' coming out in September.
You can pick up a copy of Notes from a Big Country for £7.99 from Amazon or most other online (or offline) retailers and is well-worth the money.
I'd give this book 10/10 and, as with all his other books, it really does provide hours of pure reading pleasure. You must read it!...
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