A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. This book is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. And how do we know what we know? How do we know what is in the centre of the earth, or what a black hole is? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through time and space Bill Bryson encounters astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists. He takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.