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From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space.

Table of contents

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
Pt. I	Lost in the Cosmos	7
1	How to Build a Universe	9
2	Welcome to the Solar System	19
3	The Reverend Evans's Universe	29
Pt. II	The Size of the Earth	41
4	The Measure of Things	43
5	The Stone-Breakers	63
6	Science Red in Tooth and Claw	79
7	Elemental Matters	97
Pt. III	A New Age Dawns	113
8	Einstein's Universe	115
9	The Mighty Atom	133
10	Getting the Lead Out	149
11	Muster Mark's Quarks	161
12	The Earth Moves	173
Pt. IV	Dangerous Planet	187
13	Bang!	189
14	The Fire Below	207
15	Dangerous Beauty	224
Pt. V	Life Itself	237
16	Lonely Planet	239
17	Into the Troposphere	255
18	The Bounding Main	270
19	The Rise of Life	287
20	Small World	302
21	Life Goes On	321
22	Good-bye to All That	335
23	The Richness of Being	350
24	Cells	371
25	Darwin's Singular Notion	381
26	The Stuff of Life	397
Pt. VI	The Road to Us	417
27	Ice Time	419
28	The Mysterious Biped	434
29	The Restless Ape	453
30	Good-bye	469
	Notes	479
	Bibliography	517
	Index	529