» A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly useful
Comment: It seems kindof cheesy at first, and Bryson's writing style can be a little precious. (Although always easy to read, and I certainly never felt bogged down in this book; in fact, I finished the whole thing in a weekend.) But I read it toward the beginning of a long kick to learn about stuff, and as I've gotten more in depth in several fields, I find myself remembering things I read in this book. He's given me a firmer foundation in...well, nearly everything...than I realized.

Many of you people know a lot of things, and for you this may be unnecessary. But some of you may be like me: high school chemistry is a distant memory, and you're not sure if you've ever even had a history course, and suddenly you sortof wish you knew all those things school was supposed to teach you. If that describes you, this book is a remarkably good place to start.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Resource for Us All
Comment: This is not a book to be devoured, or scanned lightly, though Mr. Bryson's fluid prose and wit would allow us to do so. This is a work to be pulled from the shelf more frequently than not and re-examined like a long Del Prado wall. It possesses the richness of a Qalicheh carpet or a Benares silk--an item to be held with awe. What an amazing compilation and composition.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Comment: The book was an entertaining read. It briefly touches on just about every subject. The only real thing that isn't that great is that it will go through several historical figures very quickly leaving you with a lot of information to digest. Later, the author often returns to talk about that figure, but after you've already forgotten about him. Not a big deal though.

Also, I thought the book would be more focused around history but it is actually more focused around the history of science.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I Just had fun
Comment: I dont know much about Sci. but just had a good time reading this book/

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Learn things and enjoy it
Comment: Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything is an great read for people who are interested in Science. It describes in easy to understand terms what the current thinking is in the various sciences including Biology, Geology, Astronomy, Physics, and Chemistry. It reads differently from your science text book in a number of ways. It covers the history of how we got to what we currently think and does so in a "warts and all" approach. It tells you which scientists were brilliant, which were loons and which were just jerks. Of course sometimes this describes the same person, say Sir Isaac Newton. It also describes some of the reaction in science to a new theory, and seldom is that pretty. It also is not afraid to say that many of the "facts" that we learned in school are either now wrong or speculation, sometimes based on a surprisingly small amount of data.

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