A Short History of Nearly Everything

SCIENCEMore than six months on the New York Times bestseller list!'[Bill Bryson] makes science interesting and funny ... You can bet that many questions you have about the universe and the world will be answered here.' -Boston GlobeIn A Short History of Nearly Everything, the famed and much beloved writer Bill Bryson confronts his greatest challenge: to understand-and, if possible, answer-the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world's most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, paleontologists, physicists, astronomers, anthropologists, and mathematicians, traveling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a profound, funny, supremely