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Main Title A short history of nearly everything /
Author Bryson, Bill.
Publisher Broadway Books,
Year Published 2003
OCLC Number 51900381
ISBN 0767908171; 9780767908177; 096573840X; 9780965738408; 9780767908184; 076790818X
Subjects Science--Popular works ; Natuurwetenschappen ; Wetenschapsbeoefening
Internet Access
Description Access URL
Sample text http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/random045/2003046006.html
Contributor biographical information http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/bios/random051/2003046006.html
Publisher description http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/description/random0413/2003046006.html
Holdings
Library Call Number Additional Info Location Last
Modified
Checkout
Status
EJDM  Q162.B88 2003 Env Science Center Library/Ft Meade,MD 10/02/2003
Edition 1st ed.
Collation ix, 544 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 517-527) and index.
Contents Notes
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.