A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is his quest to find out 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. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?
On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

• ISBN10: 1409095495
• ISBN13: 9781409095491
• Publish Date: 2 March 2010 (first published 1 January 2003)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 31 July 2023
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
• Imprint: Transworld Digital
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I'm a Bill Bryson fan but this is my favorite of his as I'm interested in almost all things science. I appreciate the fact that he takes very difficult topics and makes them accessible and interesting. His metaphors are very easy to picture and very illuminating. I also like the fact that he is careful to note that not all "facts" are in fact, facts - he makes sure he at least mentions opposing arguments or states that there's controversy over specific figures, theories, dates, etc.

I'd recommend this book to just about anyone interested in science or the history of science. I'd go so far as to say that vast portions of it would make excellent teaching resources.

[jamiereadthis]

Good grief if I had even one textbook half this enthralling in high school, who knows what kind of impassioned -ologist I would have grown up to be. I hereby petition Bryson to re-write all curriculum on behalf of the history of the world.

I would run across things half-remembered from midterms and study guides and think, "You mean this is what they were talking about? You have got to be kidding me." It's never condescending, always a joy.

In fact, what I loved most is the acute, childlike sense of wonder seeping through the pages. How fantastic little we know about the world in which we live. All the great scientific leaps fallen through the cracks, all the billions of leaps that will never be made, every scientist who with an amiable grin shrugs to say, "I don't know. We don't know. Who has any idea?" The world is a magically baffling, enchanting place, and after nearly everything there is infinitesimally more.

[Hillary]

http://purplemoonmyst.blogspot.com/

[remo]

Estimados lectores, háganme inmediatamente un favor. Así, a palo seco, debo pedirles que salgan a la calle (no es necesario que se vistan del todo, sólo lo suficiente para qe no les detengan) y compren un ejemplar del libro "Una breve historia de casi todo", de Bill Bryson. Este señor, periodista y escritor de viajes, acaba de publicar EL LIBRO DEFINITIVO de divulgación científica. El libro que a todo científico le habría gustado escribir, vaya. Me acabo de leer la última página de su edición inglesa, y ya he obligado a mi hermano a que se compre la edición española, prestándosela en primer lugar a mi madre. Es un libro del que todos podemos aprender algo, ya que relata la historia del mundo desde el primer pepinazo cósmico, a.k.a. Big Bang, hasta la aparición del ser humano como especie, pasando por todas y cada una de las ramas de la ciencia. No se lo pierdan.
Bill Bryson ha escrito otros libros. Yo me enteré de su existencia porque un par de meses antes de irme a Australia me encontré con su libro "En las antípodas", que relata sus viajes por Australia. Este libro es otra maravilla de la literatura viajera. Lo devoré y me decidí a pasar por todos los sitios que él había visitado, para comparar mi experiencia con la suya. Al final, ví más de Australia que él, porque no pasó por Tasmania ni recorrió la Great Ocean Road, ni vio Nueva Zelanda, pero él vio Perth y en general se gastó más dinero que yo. Viajando por Australia me compré el resto de sus libros, que hablan de viajes por Europa (aunque no pasó por España, el cabrón), por el Sur profundo de los USA, por Inglaterra (aunque no es exactamente éste un libro de viajes, porque Bryson vivió 20 años en Gran Bretaña), y otro par de libros sobre lengua inglesa.
Actualización: del 19-Oct-04
La traducción al español tiene varios fallos de bulto. Así, el traductor no se equivoca al cambiar "billions" por "miles de millones", pero sí se equivoca y "trillions" lo traduce por "miles de billones", en lugar de "billones". No se ha dado cuenta de que en inglés van de tres ceros en tres ceros todo el rato, no sólo en el primer escalón.
En otro punto de la traducción, Bryson dice que "Plutón es más pequeño que siete de las lunas del Sistema Solar, incluida la nuestra". El traductor dice "incluida la suya" -Caronte-, cosa que es mentira. Se le ha ido la pinza varias veces, y se nota que es alguien sin formación científica. Seguiré cotejando la traducción, y enviaré una furibunda carta a RBA, a ver si los libros de ciencia se los dan a gente que sepa un poco al menos de ciencia...

[Eve1972]

Interesting read!