One of the world's most beloved writers and New York Times
bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body 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 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
world's 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.
