A Short History of Nearly Everything

English Version of previous post Breve História de Quase Tudo.

Bill Bryson, well known for his excellent travel literature and for his irresistíble sense of humour, has decided to make an incursion into the world of science. And, as always, he did extremely well!

I'm pretty sure that, since Richard Feynman, there hasn't been anyone who was able to transmit so much scientific information in such a pleasant and interesting way.

This book reads like a novel, or actually, like a short story collection, starting from over four billion years ago and ending in the present day, while going through every aspect of the infinitely large and the infinitely small of the universe that surrounds and constitutes us.

PS: This recomendation is based on the original version in English. But I presume the German or Portuguese translations to retain the quality of the excellent original.

Extract from the abstract to the portuguese edition: "A Mammoth-sized research, many years of labour and the result is... the Big Bang, the dinossaurs, global warming, geology, Einstein, the Curies, Evolution Theory, leaded gasoline, quantum physics, quarks, vulcanoes, cromossomes, carbon, edicarian organisms, ADN, Charles Darwin and a zillion things more."

Extract from Amazon.co.uk Review: "One compelling theme that appears again and again is the utter unpredictability of the universe, despite all that we think we know about it. Nervous page-turners may care to omit the sensational chapters on the possible ways in which it all might end in disaster--Bryson enumerates with cheerful relish the kind of event that makes you want to climb under the bedclothes: undetectable asteroid colliding with the earth; superheated magma chamber erupting in your back garden; ebola carrier getting off a plane in London or New York; the HIV virus mutating to prevent its destruction in the mosquito's digestive system. Indeed, the chief theme of this sprightly book is the miraculous unlikeliness, in a universe ruled by randomness, of stability and equilibrium--of which one result is ourselves and the complex, fragile planet we inhabit. --Robin Davidson"

A Short History of Nearly Everything ~Bill Bryson (Black Swan)