Bill Bryson's bestsdling trave! books include The Lost Continent, Notes fiom a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods and Down Under. A Short History of Nearly Everything was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and won the Aventis Prize for Science Books and the Descartes Science Communication Prize. His htest book is his bestseUing childhood memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at 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.
Adenowleddement
Introduction
I: Lost in the Cosmos
1 How to Build a Universe
2 Welcome to the Solar System
3 The Reverend Evans's Universe
II: The Size of the Earth
4 The Measure of'Things
5 The Stone-Breakers
6 Science Red in Tooth and Claw
7 Elemental Matters
III: A New Age Dawns
8 Einstein's Universe
9 The Mighty Atom
10 Getting the Lead Out
11 Muster Mark's Quarks
12 The Earth Moves
IV: Dangerous Planet
13 Bang!
14 The Fire Below
15 Dangerous Beauty
V: Life Itself
16 Lonely Planet
17 Into the Troposphere
18 The Bounding Main
19 The Rise of Life
20 Small World
21 Life Goes On
22 Goodbye to All That
23 The Richness of Being
24 Cells
25 Darwin's Singular Notion
26 The Stuff of Life
VI: The Road to Us
27 Ice Time
28 The Mysterious Biped
29 The Restless Ape
30 Goodbye
Notes
Bibliography
Index