Highly original tour of the world of science and scientists

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	• A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition Bill Bryson Broadway, 2005 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nice wrting style, excellent coverage

What I like mainly on this book is Bryson's writing style. He has a great way of describing difficult scientific notions and, probably because he is not a scientist himself, can and does criticize science and scientists, when appropriate, and tries to correct historical injustices, prejudices and discriminations that have been done in the name of self interest and politics. Theme coverage is excellent; true to its name this book covers nearly every discipline of physical science. Whether you like to read about the history of science, or its future get it!

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The Layman's Scientific Reference Text

This review is for the Black Swan Paperback edition published in 2004, 574 pages of text plus comprehensive notes, bibliography and index. A SHORT HISTORY was on the USA Today top 150 best sellers list for 63 weeks between May 2003 and August 2005, reaching the peak position of number 31.

This is an extraordinary book crammed full with the history of scientific efforts to understand our universe, the earth, the structure of atoms, cells and DNA, and the origin of species. The author states that he spent three years researching and writing this book, which is astounding, because it seems it would take that long just to organize the information into what is an eminently readable text.

There is a great deal of fascinating scientific stuff in this book, but also remarkable is the anecdotal history of discovery. The author tells us that the credit for many theories and insights went not to the person who figured them out but to the guy who could market the idea; the history of nearly everything, it seems, was stolen.

Throughout A SHORT HISTORY, the author emphasizes that within the expanse of time for what we know, the human experience has been brief indeed, very fragile, and catastrophe lurks. For example, the last super volcano eruption, some 74,000 years ago, spewed enough ash to cause six years of winter. Yellowstone is an active super volcano that, according to geologists, erupts about every 600,000 years to bury the western States in ash. The last eruption was 630,000 years ago. Or consider the hundreds of thousands of asteroids zipping across the path of earth's orbit, with perhaps two or three near misses every week. Should one hit the resulting crater "would make the Grand Canyon look quaint and trifling."

A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING is exceptionally readable and informative with an extensive bibliography and index. It is the layman's scientific reference text.

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Highly original tour of the world of science and scientists

Bill Bryson, best known for his travel guides, becomes your guide in this journey to the world of science. And what a journey it is! In a clear and captivating style, Bryson takes you on an unusual tour. Instead of visiting such well-known attractions as Newton or Einstein, he takes you to little known places, tells you intriguing stories about the doings of scientists that you had never heard of, but that is exactly how science is mostly done. The book superbly meshes interesting biographic details with the fascinating depiction of science - from Big Bang to deep-sea creatures, from protein synthesis to "Cambrian Explosion", from the biggest volcanic eruptions to early humans.
I expected that such a broad coverage of topics by a non-scientist would result in numerous inaccuracies. While no book about science is perfect, I was pleasantly surprised by Bryson's extremely diligent work - he strikes a remarkable balance between the accuracy and ease of reading (or listening, if you get an audio version).

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Amazingly witty and informative.

This is a very well written book. The writer writes in an old fashioned witty style alas seldom seen nowadays. I bought more examles of the book to send to my children and best fiends.

Great book -- so so illustrations

As you can see from all of the other reviews -- the book is infintely readable, and extremely interesting.

The illustrations, however, add little, if anything to the text. all they do add is bulk to the book. It is very heavy and hard to read in bed. Go with the original.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9

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