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A Short History of Nearly Everything (平装)
by Bill Bryson
| Category:
Science |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Thanks to Bryson's knowledge and talent, science learning has been made this fun and entertaining. |
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AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 17 items |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
Let me start by saying that I enjoyed Bryson's work. I definitely respect the amount of research he put into completing this project. This was clearly a man on a mission. He literally takes on the world, attempting to the major contributors throughout history to explain how we came to understand our world. Seemingly simple questions are discussed, like how much does the Earth weigh, how old is it, what's at the core, and many other cool things.
My only complaint is that the technical depth is a bit shallow. I realize of course that he isn't a scientist, and even if he was, this clearly spans many disciplines. So I cut him some slack. Still, I would love to have seen a bit more depth on some of the modern physics subjects. I would recommend Brian Greene's works if you have the burning urge to go a little further down the rabbit hole. He IS a scientist and the subjects he discusses (like time travel, atomic mysteries, etc.) are fascinating. But that's not taking anything away from Bryson. This book is also very interesting and highly recommended. |
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Matt (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
This is really a great book. I started listening to it thinking it would be purely an intellectual journey through the development of science, and it did an excellent job of being just that journey, covering physics, geology, biology, astronomy, and just about any other field of science you can think of. If it was just the history of science, though, I would have given it just four stars. The final chapter, however, pushed it up into five-star territory. The chapter, entitled "Goodbye" is about humanity's tendency to drive other species extinct, and after giving example after heartbreaking example, he issues a call to consider the gifts we've been given, whether by chance or by providence, and use them to encourage and perpetuate life on this planet. Bryson masterfully, throughout this book, demonstrated that life truly is precious and delicate, and that we have the power to destroy or protect it, and we've been doing the former and need to turn it around. Sure it's long, but the listen is well worth it. |
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Michael Havey (MSL quote), Canada
<2006-12-31 00:00>
A Short History of Nearly Everything is an ambitious book with a broad scope, as is obvious from its title. It covers, well, nearly everything there is to know about the universe, earth, and any rock, plant, or animal that inhabits earth. The writing style, like that of Bryson's loveable travel books, is humorous and engaging. Most science writers, even ones who write books for the common reader, are scientists. Bryson admits he is merely a layman writing for laymen, who talked to a lot of experts to get his facts straight.
The scope is problematic, I think. I would have narrowed the book to astrophysics, covering the sort of concepts you would find in one of Hawking's popular books, and celebrating the genius of the major thinkers, such as Einstein, Newton, and Feynman. And why not throw in a little philosophy? If it all stated with the Big Bang, where does God fit? Did God cause the Big Bang? Is the Cosmological argument for the existence of God (from St. Thomas Aquinas) consistent with the Big Bang? What about Leibniz' Pre-Established Harmony.
Sorry, but I can't be sold on rocks, evolution, genetics, or DNA, and I suspect many readers of "A Short History" dozed off during these chapters. We laughed along with Bryson through the others.
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Scott (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
This is one of the books I wished someone would write. My knowledge of science past and present was wanting and yet there wasn't a single book written for (and by) someone in the same boat. Bill Bryson has written such a book and brillantly over-achieved in the process. In the spirit of full disclosure, I like nearly everything Mr. Bryson has written. He can be pedantic and peevish when describing the less than admirable characters and circumstances he encounters but he's always very funny. Having said that, this physically ponderous tome made me wonder whether he could sustain his humor while at the same time educating the reader over all those hundreds of pages. Miraculously, his choice of anecdotes and pacing is spot on. It is extremely readable and there are wonderful factoids and "ah ha" moments on nearly every page. Life is short and this book is not but it's absolutely worth the trade-off. |
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Dona Nicholson (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
My husband and I both read Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and we loved it, referred it to everyone we know (a friend originally referred it to us!)and purchased a copy for our grandson. If one has been out of school for a number of years, well, science has changed a lot since then! Bryson not only brings his readers up to date on current theories but also give the story of how each discipline evolved to it current understandings. Some of the best money we ever spent on a book. |
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Alex (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-31 00:00>
This book is a great tool for teaching my kids history. I keep near the dinner table, and when conversation gets quite, I open Bryson's book to some random page and start up a conversation while the kids play with their greens. Buy it and have fun learning.
Now, as a scientist at a national weapons laboratory, what concerns me is our future. We are entering an age of advanced bio/nano techonology and it could have dire consequences if we don't begin to address the challenges today. Take Invitro fertilization (IVF) for example. It is very expensive, and few people can easily afford it. Now imagine, say 15 years from now, the exorbitant cost of tweaking IVF embryos with state-of-the-art gene science to produce offspring with significantly improved physical and mental capabilities. Only the richest rich - think of the millionaire space tourists - will be able to afford such cutting-edge science. Then what, except to fall further behind, will happen to our kids when they try to compete against souped-up humans for jobs? Unless we take a stand, the extreme wealth and power gradients that already exist today between us poor slobs and the billionaires will likely grow far worse. This is what I consider in my recently well received strong sci-fi book Beyond Future Shock . It also what James Hughes considers in his non-fiction book Citizen Cyborg. |
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J. Hitchcock (MSL quote), UK
<2006-12-31 00:00>
Voltaire once said of the Holy Roman Empire that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. I feel the same way about this book. It is not particularly short (weighing in at just under 600 pages), nor a history in the sense that most historians, including historians of science, would use the term.
As for "of everything", or even "of nearly everything", that can only be obvious hyperbole. I suspect that the phrase was included as a sly dig at some recent authors in the field of popular science whose works could be subtitled A Short (or Long) History of a Remarkably Narrow and Specialised Area of Human Knowledge. Bill Bryson clearly has wider ambitions than that. He first made his name as a writer of travel books, and this is a travel book of a sort, a Cook's tour of science, taking in cosmology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, oceanography, biology, and palaeontology. He combines information about the current state of knowledge in these different sciences with a brief overview of the historical development of each. He does not have a scientific background himself but has obviously learnt a lot in the writing of this book; each chapter has been reviewed by an expert in the relevant field.
A feature of the book is that the author loves to regale his audiences with tales of the foibles and eccentricities of the great and the good of science. Thus we learn about the nineteenth-century anatomist-clergyman the Revd. William Buckland and his ambition to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; guests at his home were likely to be served baked guinea pig or battered mice. Isaac Newton once poked a needle into his own eye socket (motivated by scientific curiosity rather than masochism). The chemist Carl Scheele was in the habit of tasting a sample of every substance he was investigating, regardless of its toxicity, a habit which probably led to his early death. Linnaeus amused himself by giving plant genera sexually suggestive Latin names such as "Clitoria".
The motivation for telling these stories is presumably not just a love of idle gossip; they seem to have been designed to reassure the reader that scientists are not some alien race of super-intelligent boffins but human beings like any other. The book is designed to be both entertaining and informative, to combine characteristic Bryson humour with serious scientific information. Some of the author's own preoccupations come through clearly. The fact that the final chapter deals with extinctions, for example, seems to point to his "green" environmentalist beliefs. He clearly has no time for the Creationist fundamentalists who believe that the Book of Genesis is the only scientific or historical textbook anyone will ever need. (I note that he has taken some predictable flak from them on this board).
In my opinion the author succeeds better in entertaining his readers than in informing them. His style is a delight to read, being both witty and friendly. As far as information goes, however, I felt that the book was perhaps a little too ambitious in scope. It might not be a "history of nearly everything", but trying to cope with so many scientific disciplines between the covers of one book is a huge undertaking in itself. Although the result was certainly entertaining, I felt that at times it seemed a bit shallow, leaving me knowing everything about the personal habits of the great scientists but wanting to know much more about their contributions to science. |
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