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Cover image for A short history of nearly everything
Format:
Book (large print)
Title:
A short history of nearly everything
Author:
ISBN:
9780375432002
Edition:
1st large print ed.
Publication Information:
New York : Random House Large Print, ©2003.
Physical Description:
x, 939 pages ; 25 cm
Contents:
pt. 1. Lost in the cosmos (How to build a universe -- Welcome to the solar system -- The Reverend Evans's universe) -- pt. 2. The size of the earth (The measure of things -- The stone-breakers -- Science red in tooth and claw -- Elemental matters) -- pt. 3. A new age dawns (Einstein's universe -- The mighty atom -- Getting the lead out -- Muster Mark's quarks -- The earth moves) -- pt. 4. Dangerous planet (Bang! -- The fire below -- Dangerous beauty) -- pt. 5. Life itself (Lonely planet -- Into the troposphere -- The bounding main -- The rise of life -- Small world -- Life goes on -- Good-bye to all that -- The richness of being -- Cells -- Darwin's singular notion -- The stuff of life) -- pt. 6. The road to us (Ice time -- The mysterious biped -- The restless ape -- Good-bye).
Summary:
One of the world's most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as 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 world₂s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
Holds: