A short history of nearly everything

Resource Information

The work A short history of nearly everything represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Wilmington Memorial Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

A short history of nearly everything

Statement of responsibility

Bill Bryson

Creator

• Bryson, Bill

Subject

• Science
• Science -- Popular works

Genre

• Popular works

Language

eng

Summary

In this book Bill Bryson explores the most intriguing and consequential questions that science seeks to answer and attempts to understand everything that has transpired from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. To that end, Bill Bryson apprenticed himself to a host of the world's most profound scientific minds, living and dead. His challenge is to take subjects like geology, chemistry, paleontology, astronomy, and particle physics and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people, like himself, made bored (or scared) stiff of science by school. His interest is not simply to discover what we know but to find out how we know it. How do we know what is in the center of the earth, thousands of miles beneath the surface? How can we know the extent and the composition of the universe, or what a black hole is? How can we know where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through space and time, Bill Bryson encounters a splendid gallery of the most fascinating, eccentric, competitive, and foolish personalities ever to ask a hard question. In their company, he undertakes a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

500

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

Q162

LC item number

.B88 2005

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography