This is an immensely readable book with a truly monumental amount of information. While reading it, one might wish to remember all its content, but it's written in a way allowing the reader to pick up the volume and start reading at any point, according to his interests, though Bryson relays all subjects in captivating and available way, with a big dose of humor.

This is a weighty book - 600 pages - but Bryson's not joking. He really tries to cover everything, from the beginning of the universe and the nature of our solar system and planet, through biological evolution of our species and the effects of us being here, both on nature and other creatures. Needless to say, he does an extremely good job of captivating the reader's attention from the first page and has no difficulty laying out complex concepts in a way that every reader will understand. Also, aside from all the facts, the book is also full of trivia and anecdotes about the experiments and the scientists who performed them.

In the introduction, Bryson recalls his childhood and remembers how he was fascinated by the image of a cross-section of our planet, but at the same time put down by the nature of the book that contained it. The dry presentation of the facts, that were accompanied only by a set of exercies to test the gained knowledge, puzzled him. How did these people know how our planet looks from the inside? And who exactly were they?
In his book, he accomplishes an important thing, one of the most important things - he presents the data while at the same time never letting go of the terribly exciting feeling of discovery, and presenting information about the discoverers themselves. It's obvious that he did a lot of research, but it's also obvious that these things fascinated him, and he grabs the reader's hand and runs headlong into the unexplored. And it is a world full of wonders.

If schoolteachers shared Bryson's joy and flair we might have ended up with a whole lot more of biologists, physicists, chemists and geologists. I don't know if it's the best book of it's kind, but it is certainly an achievement worth re-reading.

A fascinating history of science. Ever curious how everything we know about the world came to be - read this! I loved reading about what old greats like Darwin thought about the world - they were all right about most things, but also very wrong about some things - makes you wonder how much we are wrong about today!

Another interesting piece was how many of the world's prominent scientists had the time to do their research because they came from rich families. Very different from todays notion of 'trust funders'.

If you're interested in how the universe lead up to our existence, read this book. It gives wonderful & funny insight on who we are as a species & pays tribute to all many of those who gave their contributions to help us figure it out. It's a captivating read. I give it 5 stars.

Love Bill Bryson’s writing. A lot of research went into this book. I found it interesting and not condescending or too complicated for me to understand. Really answered a lot of questions that I have pondered over the years. If you have time on your hands, put down your phone and step away from your computer and read this book.

What an amazing book. This was a serious page turner and one of my favorites. Pretty much perfect in every way. The only problem this book has is that it was published in 2003 and has not been updated since. That puts it over 22 years out of date with respect to pretty much everything, and we have learned a tremendous amount in the last 22 years. It’s time for a new addition.

Haven't read the entire book yet, but judging by the introduction part and a quick overlook, and way of writing and explanation.
It's good for beginners, because I'm a beginner in reading and it's drawing my attention and interesting good. And I'm a bit confused about everything going on around me and find out, this book can help me process everything with  a single vision. So I bought this book, judging by the introduction part it seems promising, now let's see what it delivers.

“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly—in you.”

A Short History of Nearly Everything is not as impossibly far-reaching as the title would indicate. An attempt to cram everything and the kitchen sink into a work intended for the general reader is surely a recipe for failure—or so one might think. Bryson marshals science, history, and philosophy to present a big-picture understanding of our universe from past to present. Extraneous details are filtered out, and mysteries left unexamined, yet it somehow feels complete. Not unlike a film editor who can cut down 24 hours of production material into a feature-length film, he manages to pack a world of wonder and insight into an accessible and entertaining, though relatively lengthy (544-page) tome.

Bryson’s preoccupation is less with the rote repetition of facts (though there is that, too) than with conveying just how it is we know what we know. He takes us behind the curtain for a more intimate look at the process of discovery and the strokes of genius essential to that process.

Lengthy and mildly scatterbrained it might be, ASHONE is a pure literary delight. The author’s excitement and enthusiasm for the subject matter drip from every page. The sheer joy he receives from learning little gems he missed in high school or being reintroduced to information forgotten long ago is intoxicating. He meets with a wonderful cast of men and women to highlight the personalities behind the stories of discovery. Lone geniuses are a rarity in any field, and science is no exception. Bryson scratches below the surface to meet the individuals who played prominent roles yet went unrecognized.

In taking the long view, Bryson engages some of science’s toughest questions. Everything from the Big Bang to man’s (relatively terse) evolutionary past is presented here, with a nod to some of the more eminent and intriguing figures from each field. I particularly appreciated that after a concept was explained, he immediately followed up with the most obvious question in response. It really helps the lay reader navigate these complex topics.

Bryson spends a good amount of time on natural disasters, describing the many ways in which they shaped the history of our planet. His frequently humorous analogies help you understand their sheer scale and the havoc left in their wake. Ice ages, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and pandemics are each showcased in breathtaking detail in some of the most harrowing events on planetary record. Given all the chaos that has besieged our planet, it becomes soberingly clear by the book’s end that we humans—or any life for that matter—are incredibly lucky to be here. In light of all that can go wrong and has gone wrong, it’s remarkable there is any life left to comment on the tragedy and storied disarray. I commend Bryson for demonstrating how truly diminutive our time here on Earth is relative to the universe’s imponderably vast history.

Bryson should also be applauded for pointing out places where our inquiry has hit a brick wall or those areas that remain imperfectly understood. The fact that we have accumulated such vast storehouses of knowledge over the last few centuries does not mean there are no mysteries left to explore. Indeed, dozens of questions both big and small remain unanswered, and new discoveries have a tendency to open up several more. We can both be proud about what we have uncovered to date and humble about the many uncharted possibilities that surely await us.

Fast and Loose with Science

There are a few caveats, however, with respect to some of the finer details. In one place he describes particles with “spin” as actually rotating about an axis (they are not). This erroneous conception of elementary particles dates back to the 1920s, when George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit interpreted the motion of electrons as self-rotation around their own axis. A few years later, Paul Dirac pointed out that electrons could not be spinning according to the rules of orbital angular momentum because the rate at which their surface would have to be spinning (to produce the magnitude of the magnetic moment) would have to exceed the speed of light, which would violate the special theory of relativity.

In another place Bryson says that quantum entanglement is a violation of relativity (it is not). Relativity tells us that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and this applies even to things with zero mass, such as information or other electromagnetic radiation. Entanglement says that measuring a particle in one place can instantly affect a particle somewhere else. However, this effect is constrained by the cosmic speed limit. On p. 42 of his book What Is Relativity?, Jeffrey Bennett responds to this notion:

“However, while laboratory experiments suggest that this instantaneous effect can really happen, current understanding of physics tells us that it cannot be used to transmit any useful information from one place to the other; indeed, if you were at the location of the first particle and wanted to confirm that the second had been affected, you’d need to receive a signal from its location, and that signal could not travel faster than light.”

Bryson also claims that the production of black holes within particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider could destroy the world, when in fact, these microscopic black holes would disintegrate in nanoseconds thanks to Hawking radiation. On p. 154 of the same book, Bennett also debunks this largely media-driven fear:

“Some physicists have indeed proposed scenarios in which such micro black holes could be produced in the Large Hadron Collider, but even if they are right, there’s nothing to worry about. The reason is that while the LHC can generate particles from greater concentrations of energy than any other machine that humans have ever built, nature routinely makes such particles. Some of those particles must occasionally rain down on Earth, so if they were dangerous, we would have suffered the consequences long ago.

"In case you are wondering how a micro black hole could be “safe,” the most likely answer has to do with a process called Hawking radiation…Hawking showed that the laws of quantum physics imply that black holes can gradually “evaporate” in the sense of having their masses decrease, even while nothing ever escapes from within their event horizons. The rate of evaporation depends on a black hole’s mass, with lower-mass black holes evaporating much more rapidly. The result is that while the evaporation rate would be negligible for black holes with star-like masses or greater, micro black holes would evaporate in a fraction of a second, long before they could do any damage.”

He may have consulted with experts, but the manuscript could have benefited from additional fact-checking. That said, although the book was published in 2003, there is little that is out of date as of this writing—the confirmed interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans being one notable discovery of late that adds greater texture to the stories recounted here. Additionally, I feel there could (and should) have been a greater emphasis on climate change; Bryson seemed to skirt over it whenever a related topic arose, and it's not clear whether this was intentional.

Closing Thoughts

The content in ASHONE is something I think everyone should know and be exposed to, and it's hard to imagine the material presented with greater alacrity than it is here. The passion and unbridled enthusiasm on display frequently approaches Sagan-esque proportions, in a style redolent of the signature series Cosmos, which is about the highest praise a work in this genre could hope to achieve. Though I found a few errors—and suspect the average grad student in one of a number of the subjects covered could spot a handful more—the book is nevertheless a praiseworthy stab at science writing for the layperson. Bryson set an ambitious task for himself and ultimately delivered a lively, accessible, and mostly scientifically faithful, albeit cursory, proem to the history of the universe as we know it today.
 
“Even now as a species, we are almost preposterously vulnerable in the wild. Nearly every large animal you can care to name is stronger, faster and toothier than us. Faced with attack, modern humans have only two advantages. We have a good brain, with which we can devise strategies, and we have hands with which we can fling or brandish hurtful objects. We are the only creature that can harm at a distance. We can thus afford to be physically vulnerable.” (p. 447)

Fabulous.  Everyone should own a copy. Crash Course Study Skills recommended it because there are so many fantastic citations and sources to build from, and as a student that is incredibly helpful.  Also clever and fun to read!

Jeder, der in seinem Leben mal eine gewisse Zeit Sport gemacht hat, kennt das Gefühl: Während man eine Übung zum tausendsten Mal macht, knirscht/knackt/springt etwas irgendwo im Körper, und man weiß mit absoluter Gewissheit: Irgendwas tief in mir drin hat sich grad radikal verändert.

Bill Brysons „A Short History of Nearly Everything“ macht das Gleiche.
Mit dem Geist des Lesers.
Ungefähr 20 mal.

Brysons Buch ist eine tour de force durch alle möglichen Wissenschaften und ihre Entstehungsgeschichte: Meteorologie, Biologie, Geologie, Physik, Astronomie und so weiter und so fort. Indem Bryson sich in jedem Feld an den historischen Entwicklungen ihrer Erkenntnisse entlang hangelt, kann man mitverfolgen und nachvollziehen, wie sich die einzelnen Wissenschaften entwickelt und entfaltet haben – und die grundlegendsten Erkenntnisse mitnehmen.

Das Ganze bleibt notwendig absolut oberflächlich und kursorisch. Bryson macht das mit einer wundervollen Einführung deutlich, in der er beschreibt, wie er kurz vor Drucklegung die Korrekturen eines Experten einarbeitet, den er interviewt hatte: Etliche Ungenauigkeiten und Fehler hatten sich aus der Sicht des Spezialisten eingeschlichen – und das war nur ein Interviewter auf einem Themenfeld in einem Buch mit Dutzenden Themen und zahllosen Interviewten auf 600 Seiten.

Aber wenn man dies weiß und akzeptiert, den Geist lockert und sich klarmacht, dass man selbst weiterlesen kann und muss, wenn einen die Details eines Themas interessieren, der wird mit einer Überblicksdarstellung belohnt, die einen immer wieder wie ein Kind staunen und wundern, teilweise auch verzweifeln lässt.

Was da im Kopf knirscht, sind die alten Gewissheiten, die zerbrechen.

Bryson kann packend und anschaulich erzählen und das macht den Hammer der Erkenntnis aus: Wenn er referiert, wie leer das Universum eigentlich ist, dann erinnert man sich, die Fakten hier und dort vielleicht schon mal gehört zu haben – aber nach Brysons Kapitel ist der Blick zum Himmel ein anderer als vorher. Wenn man über die Auslöschungswellen liest, die diesen Planeten immer wieder geleert haben und gleichzeitig vermittelt bekommt, von welch fragilem (und nebenbei völlig untypischen) Netz aus speziellen Rahmenbedingungen unser momentanes Überleben abhängig ist, wird man wirklich nachdenklich. Dass wir für 99,99% der Vorzeit keine archäologischen Funde haben, dass wir über den Mars mehr wissen als über den Meeresboden, dass die Bedrohung durch Vulkane und Himmelskörper enorm und nicht abwendbar ist, dass unsere Existenz von einem geradezu lächerlich unwahrscheinlichen Netz von Faktoren bedingt ist, dass wir über die Vorgänge im Inneren der Erde nichts wissen und so weiter … all das hat der interessierte Leser schon mal im Fernsehen, auf Deutschlandfunk oder im Netz zur Kenntnis genommen.

Aber Bryson macht es einem klar. Begreifbar. Nachvollziehbar.
Und das Wort, dass man am häufigsten denkt, ist „Alter ...“.

Und doch ist das Buch in keinster Weise deprimierend oder pessimistisch. Bryson bringt ein wundervolles Plädoyer dafür, sowohl unsere Fragilität und Unwahrscheinlichkeit, als auch unsere komplette Unwissenheit positiv zu deuten: Als Geschenk und Beginn einer großartigen Reise, auf der wir bisher praktisch noch überhaupt nichts erreicht haben – aber alles erreichen KÖNNEN, wenn wir es nur richtig anpacken. Es wendet sich gegen jede Hybris der Aufklärung, gegen jede teleologische Deutung der Evolution und bisherigen Zivilisation und fordert gleichzeitig auf, zu neuen Ufern aufzubrechen.

Ich habe glaube ich seit „Ismael“ vor 20 Jahren kein Buch mehr gelesen, das mich so direkt so bewegt hat. Das Knirschen im Kopf hat bis jetzt noch nicht aufgehört.

Und es ist ein gutes Gefühl.

I read Bryson' s The Body first and really enjoyed it.  I mostly knew what to expect.  This history is not short and I had trouble knowing what each chapter was going to be about. I learned a lot and experienced the pure joy of learning.

Un libro que te entretendrá desde la primera página, ya que te cuenta con humor los principales hallazgos, hitos  e inventos de la humanidad.

I have spent my life wondering about the natural world around me. In fact, I've made a career from these interests. I know a bit about the cosmos, and I'll have conversations over a beer about elementary quantum mechanics. I'll rant passionately about successional stages of forests and the importance of wilderness conservation.

I understand time dilation and mycorrhizal relationships between plants, fungi, and animals and the indescribable and excruciating importance of the resiliency it produces on our planets.

I feel like I can understand the wonder of accretion disk theory in the creation of our early solar system from the nebulae of our own incarnate sun's previous corpse. Sometimes I even think I can understand in a rudimentary way how a runaway chemical reaction could lead to life. To us.

This book takes everything that you think you know about the universe, broadens the scope of this thought, and increases the breadth and depth of detail by such a factor as to be nearly overwhelming. I particularly enjoy the human aspect that Bill is able to infuse into his narrative. He absolutely enraptures the reader and makes one wonder how we even figured anything out at all.

Time and time again, as discoveries were made, we see through Bill's detailed research that we are lucky indeed that history played out the way it did. He also raises the thought of what we may have lost along the way.  In addition to Bill's historical narrative that he excels at, we are also fortunate that his unique prose serves as a perfect tool for breaking down complex ideas and explaining discoveries and natural science from everything we know (and think we know) into a nearly easily digestible narrative that keeps you hooked, page after page.