Take note, science lovers and science-phobes alike!

This time it's not the Appalachians or England.

In A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, Bill Bryson has taken his readers on an exciting, informative and always entertaining tour of both the history of science and the details of the science itself. Essays covering an eclectic diversity of scientific topics ranging from the Big Bang and quantum physics, to paleontology, geology, biology, pandemics, genetics, evolution, glaciation, plate tectonics, weather patterns, volcanism and beyond are pitched at the perfect level to be accessible to the layman without being patronizing to a reader who happens to be more informed about a particular topic. Even the most esoterically learned science-ready polymath will find at least one or two of the topics set at a level high enough to be challenging as well.

Beautiful illustrations peppered throughout the text, a dash of humour and cynicism plus a wonderful series of amusing anecdotes and side bars make A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING a delicious confection of eye candy and brain candy. The multiplicity and diversity of the ideas covered means that A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING can be read in bite-sized chunks with the interested reader taking a random walk through the book starting at virtually any paragraph on any page. But the intelligent organization of the topics and the chronology that Bryson follows also guarantees a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience for those that want to travel from first page to last in order!

Science-phobes take note! If you've been looking for a way to set your fears aside, A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING just might be the ticket you've been looking for. Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

El libro, como su título indica, da un repaso a un montón de temas como la cosmología, la física, la química, geología, paleontología, zoología, etc y etc... pero todo de una forma muy amena, fácil de entender, y sobre todo muy interesante.

Muerta me he quedado con la descripción de los miles de peligros que nos rodean, y que si estamos aquí hoy en día en este planeta es por puñetera casualidad u_u

I almost wanted to smack myself for not reading this book earlier. Having said that, since I've only started on audiobooks about 2-years back, perhaps it's not such a bad thing, because I believe with all my heart that I enjoyed this much more with the superb narration.

Firstly, A Short History of Nearly Everything is a title which is ambitious by any measure. Really? Nearly everything? Bill Bryson sure did a nifty job at creating this riveting read which I can describe alternately, though not perfectly, as 'A layman's summary of leading scientific thoughts, discoveries and events that shaped our understanding of the planet Earth as well as the life which resides therein.' And the truth is that even now, we are still pretty far from truly understanding or knowing very much.

Bryson's writing style can be described as eloquently delightful. A topic such as this can easily be dry in its rendition, instead Bryson has injected an insouciant dry sense of humour therein. He also has a way of putting together the most amusing or incredibly apt yet elegant descriptions. An example which I loved was how he described a person who was tall, thin and not very nice as 'a lanky assemblage of shortcomings.'

The audio narration was delivered with such deadpan flair that combined with the author's style it made for many hours of great entertainment. I've caught myself laughing aloud so many times that passersby must have thought me a bit mad.

I particularly appreciated the real life analogies that helped to explain scientific measurements which were either infinitesimally too small or too large for the every day person to comprehend. The flow of the narrative from one scientific branch to another was almost seamless and it was written in a manner that actually makes the title of the book relevant.

In short, this book was both enlightening and enjoyable. I highly recommend this to anyone who has even a little interest in science.

I didn't realize this book was about nearly everything in the history of science rather than everything in the history of society, but that's okay. Bryson explains all with a flourish of wit, and with an eye for the personal oddities or ridiculous perversities of humanity's greatest scientists. For example, '"of all the disciplines in science, paleoanthropology boasts perhaps the largest share of egos', say the authors of Java Man--a book, it may be noted, that itself devotes long wonderfully unselfconscious passages to attacks on the inadequacies of others, in particular the authors' former close colleague Donald Johnson" (p. 551).

A serious book about science written in an inviting and light hearted way. Superb.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything by American author Bill Bryson is a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more so to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject.

Bryson describes graphically and in layperson's terms the size of the universe and that of atoms and subatomic particles.

He then explores the history of geology and biology and traces life from its first appearance to today's modern humans, placing emphasis on the development of the modern Homo sapiens.

Furthermore, he discusses the possibility of the Earth being struck by a meteorite and reflects on human capabilities of spotting a meteor before it impacts the Earth, and the extensive damage that such an event would cause. ...

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تاریخچه تقریبا همه چیز»؛ «شرح مختصری از همه چیز»؛ «علم و سرگذشت آن»؛ نویسنده: بیل برایسون؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز ششم ماه جولای سال 2005میلادی

عنوان: تاریخچه تقریبا همه چیز؛ نویسنده: بیل برایسون؛ مترجم: محمدتقی فرامرزی؛ تهران، مازیار، 1384، در 615ص، شابک 9645676487؛ موضوع: علوم به زبان ساده از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 21م

عنوان: شرح مختصری از همه چیز؛ نویسنده: بیل برایسون؛ مترجم: محمود زنجانی؛ تهران، دایره المعارف ایرانشناسی، 1388، در 512ص، شابک9786005204155؛

عنوان: علم و سرگذشت آن؛ نویسنده: بیل برایسون؛ مترجم: مجید عمیق؛ تهران، مهراب قلم کتابهای مهتاب، 1390، در 171ص، شابک9786001033636؛

نویسنده درباره ی موضوعاتی گوناگون، از «مهبانگ» گرفته، تا «مکانیک کوانتوم»، و از «تکامل»، تا «زمین شناسی»، به بحث میپردازند؛ ایشان در کتابشان از راه ماجراهای «کاشفان» و «دانشمندان» موضوعات علمی را، به بحث میگذارد؛ ایشان در این کتاب کوشش میکنند برخلاف درسنامه های علمی، که به نظر ایشان، شوقی برای دانستن، در خوانشگران برنمیانگیزند، چرا که هیچگاه به چراها، چگونه ها و چه هنگام ها، در مورد اکتشافات علمی نمیپردازند، ایشان توانسه اند موضوعات علمی را به شکلی جذاب ارائه دهند

نقل از متن: (نمیدانستم «پروتون» یا «پروتئین» چیست، «کوارک» را از «کواسار» تشخیص نمیدادم، نمیدانستم زمینشناسها چگونه میتوانند نگاهی به یک لایه از توده سنگ دیواره ی یک دره بیندازند، و عمر آن را تشخیص دهند، حقیقتاً هیچ چیز نمیدانستم؛ یک اشتیاق آرام و خارق العاده، برای یاد گرفتن، و دانستن برخی نکات، درباره ی این موضوعات، و دریافتن اینکه تا کنون چند نفر توانسته اند از آنها سر درآورند، آرام آرام بر وجودم چیره شد؛ این همواره بزرگترین شگفتی زندگی ام بوده است ـ دانشمندان چگونه از مسائل سر درمیآورند...)؛ پایان نقل؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 29/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

این کتاب هم متاسفانه خسته کننده بود، دغدغه نویسنده این بود که چرا در کتب علمی نحوه رسیدن به حقایق بیان نمیشه. سر همین جزئیات خیلی حوصله سر بری رو از زندگی دانشمندا و پروسه رسیدنشون به تئوری ها مخصوصا تئوری های اشتباه رو بیان کرده بود. و یه مشکل دیگه این بود که قصد داشت مسائل علمی رو مثل محاسبه حجم کره زمین، قدمت زمین و ... بیش از حد ساده سازی کنه سر همین ادم اخر متوجه نمیشد که خب چرا فلان دانشمند به این عدد رسید. بعضی بخش های محدودی جالب بود ولی خب خوندن این کتاب صرفا تخمین محدودی از یه سری تئوری که درستی غلطیش هنوز مورد بحثه به شما میده نه تاریخ "همه چیز".
نویسنده مطالبی رو که صرفا هم تئوریک بیان شده بود بدون شواهد اماری صرفا به دلیل اجماع دانشمندا روی اون تئوری به عنوان حقیقت بیانش کرده بود.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's summation of life, the universe, and everything, a nice little easy-reading science book containing an overview of things every earthling should be aware of.

As I've repeatedly mentioned over the years, every time one of the casual-readers tells me I have to read something, like Harry Potter or the DaVinci Code, I dig my feet in deeper and resolve to never read it. This is one of the occasions I should have shaved a decade off of my stubbornness and caved in right away.

Bryson covers a wide range of topics, from the formation of the universe to the evolution of man for our apelike forebears, and all points in between. Atoms? Cells? These are just stops along the enlightenment highway that Bill Bryson has paved! He touches upon quantum physics, geology, the size of our solar system, the year without a summer, and other topics innumerable.

The writing style is so accessible that I have to think I'd be some kind of scientists if my high school and college text books were written by Bill Bryson. His easy, breezy style makes even the most complicated topics easier to digest.

It's not often that I come away from a book having felt like I learned something new, criminal techniques from my usual reads excepted. Bryson has succeeded where many have failed before him. He has used chicanery to get me to read nonfiction and enjoy myself while doing it. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

" تبارك الله أحسن الخالقين "

هذا ما ستنطقه شفتاك حين تنتهي من كل فصل من فصول هذا الكتاب ستشعر بكم العجز الذي نحن فيه ليس لنصنع أو نبتكر إنما فقط لنفهم كيف تسير الأمور في هذا الكون

ستجد من بين السطور مقولات كهذه " إنه عالم يتجاوز الفهم بالنسبة لمعظمنا "

وبالنسبة للكتاب فهو كتلة من الابداع غزارة المعلومات ودقة التفاصيل ولو قرر المؤلف أن يسترسل بكتابته 6000 صفحة بدلا من 600 لاستطاع ذلك من قوة الامتاع في السرد

والمؤلف أكاد أجزم أنه كان عبارة عن موسوعة متحركة من المعلومات فمن يكتب هكذا كتاب يجب أن يكون موسوعة وليس كاتب ومؤلف فقط و كم من الكتب والابحاث والمراجع قد قرأ ليصل لهذا الكم من المعلومات

وسأحرص أن أتتبع بقية مؤلفاته لعلي أجد ما فقدته حين أنهيت هذا الكتاب

أنصح الجميع به

“…Inevitably owe at least as much to supposition as to science.”

“A Short History of Nearly Everything” is in a word fascinating…mostly. I found this text the most interesting when Bill Bryson turned his attention to the personalities in the science world as opposed to lots of the science itself. He is more comfortable writing on that human angle subject and it shows.
For a book that deals with nonfiction (in as much as science is fact, this text makes clear that much science is really nothing more than conjecture) one section that will keep you on the edge of your seat is Part IV, called “Dangerous Planet”. Do not read it before bed, you will have bad dreams. It’s all about the cataclysmic ways the Earth can create (this is not induced by humans, just natural cycles) another extinction level event. At one point the text says about the planet, “For all the instability, it’s mostly remarkably and amazingly tranquil.” Understatement!
Although Mr. Bryson appropriately does not explore or accept or reject the idea of a Creator (that is not the realm of science anyway) and after reading this book the myriad of improbable, impossible and /or unexplainable intricacies of the universe, nature on earth and life itself have only deepened my belief in a Creator who put all these processes in motion. As this quote from page 172 says, “We live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t altogether know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.” There is still so much (most things actually) that science cannot even begin to understand, but too often it is presented as fact. I am irritated that when I was in school it was presented in this infallible (and intellectually dishonest) manner. Bill Bryson mostly avoids that arrogance. This quote appears in some form continuously throughout the text, “In short, we don’t quite know where we came from.” If this book makes one thing abundantly clear, it is that science knows very little, and can prove nothing about the origins of anything! That astounds me! The quote I used as the title for this review is the recurrent theme of this text. As one scientist in the text states. “You can trust the studies well enough, generally speaking. What you can’t trust are the sweeping conclusion that people often attach to them.”
Overall, I liked “A Short History of Nearly Everything”; some parts of it are immensely readable. Science and a bit of history thrown in is always interesting. However, by the last 100 pages or so I was more than ready for the book to be finished. I read it; I was intrigued, learned a lot. Moving on.
Another great line from the text-“Sometimes the world just isn’t ready for a good idea.”

A short history of nearly everything

This is a remarkable accomplishment. From the author, of course, but also from me, to have read it. I'm not a scientist, so when I started reading this book, I expected that I would skip some parts. But I didn't ; I read every single page of this highly readable and enjoyable book.
I won't bother you with all the scientific stuff I learned. Instead, I compiled a top 5 list of the frightful fates of some scientists.

1. Max Planck (1858-1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose work on quantum theory won him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1918. Max Planck had to deal with many tragedies in his life. His beloved first wife, Marie, died at a young age in 1909, probably from TBC. They had four children (with his second wife Magda he had a fifth child Hermann). During the first world war, his son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914, while his other son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. His daughter Grete died in 1917 while giving birth to her first child, and two years later her twin sister Emma died the same way, after having married Grete's widower. In February 1944 his home in Berlin was completely destroyed by an air raid, annihilating all his scientific records and correspondence. In 1945, Erwin was sentenced to death by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof and executed, because of his participation in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in july 1944. His death destroyed much of Max Planck's will to live.
Tragic

2. Doctor Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889 – 1944) was an American mechanical engineer and chemist. He was a key figure in a team of chemists that developed the lead additive to gasoline (TEL) as well as some of the first CFCs. His work led to the release of large quantities of lead into the atmosphere as a result of the large-scale combustion of leaded gasoline all over the world. Thomas Midgley Jr. died three decades before the ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas effects of CFCs in the atmosphere became widely known. Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny". In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. This system was the eventual cause of his own death when he was entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55.
Horrible

3. Gideon Mantell (1790 – 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist and paleontologist. He and his wife discovered several large teeth of an Iguanodon in 1822, but they were dismissed as belonging to a fish or mammal or rhinoceros, by other scientist. Mantell was mocked by his peers, and especially sir Richard Owen (the coiner of the word "dinosaur") made his life a hell. Mantell became financially destitute and his wife left him in 1839. His son emigrated to New Zealand that same year, and his daughter died in 1840. In 1841 Mantell was the victim of a terrible carriage accident in London. Somehow he fell from his seat, became entangled in the reins and was dragged across the ground. Mantell suffered a debilitating spinal injury. He became bent, crippled and in constant pain. Richard Owen took advantage from this and tried to ruin Mantell's reputation as an important contributor to the science of paleontology. In fact, Owen even transferred claim of a number of discoveries from Mantell to himself. Mantell could no longer bear the pain of his spine and the burden of Owen’s hatred and on 10 November 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium and later lapsed into a coma. He died that afternoon. An anonymous obituary appeared shortly afterwards in the Literary Gazette, which denigrated Mantell’s achievements and claimed his scientific work was no more than mediocre at best – although anonymous, the style of the obituary quickly identified it as coming from Owen’s pen. Then, as a final act of indignity, Owen had a section of Mantell's spine removed and displayed his pickled spine in a jar in his museum.
Dreadful

4. Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was a German polar reseacher, geophysicist and meteorologist. Today he is most remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift by hypothesizing in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth. Wegener's fourth and last Greenland expedition was in 1930. The 14 participants under his leadership were to establish three permanent stations from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and year-round Arctic weather observations made. Success depended on enough provisions being transferred from West camp to Eismitte ("mid-ice") for two men to winter there, and this was a factor in the decision that led to his death. On 24 September, although the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by dog sled. During the journey, the temperature reached −60 °C (−76 °F) and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife without anesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On 19 October the remaining three members of the expedition reached Eismitte. There being only enough supplies for three at Eismitte, Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West camp. They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener had to use skis, but they never reached the camp: Wegener died and Villumsen was never seen again. Wegener died probably of a heart attack (Bill Bryson wrote he froze to death). Villumsen buried Wegener’s body in the snow and marked the grave with skis. Villumsen then resumed his journey, but did not complete it. His body was never found. In May 1931, after a search, Kurt Wegener discovered his brother’s grave. He and other expedition members built a pyramid-shaped mausoleum in the ice and snow, and Alfred Wegener’s body was laid to rest in it. The mausoleum has now, with the passing of time, been buried under Greenland’s ice and snow.
Terrible

5. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) was an American astronomer who is known for playing a vital role in the development of extragalactic astronomy. What became of Edwin Hubble after his death at his home on the 28th of September 1953, is a mystery. The whereabouts of his body were known only to his widow. It is not known whether he was buried or cremated or where his remains now lie. This secret his widow took to her own grave. His wife who adored him, devoted years of her life to writing an almost mythical account of her husband's life, much of which is evidently false.
Creepy

9/10

Sorry, Bill Bryson, I think this may be the MOST boring thing I've ever read in my life. I really loved Walk in the Woods..I loved his witty banter and his engaging, story-telling writing style. I'm not sure WHO, if anyone, would actually enjoy this bland book. I love science and history, but this was just excruciating and mind-numbingly boring and tedious. I ended up skimming most of it. Life is too short for boring books!