This is the most unusual encyclopedia of all! And it is the first book to receive the prestigious European award for contributions to the development of world science named after René Descartes. According to the author, he tried to write “a simple book about complex things and show the whole world that science is interesting!” The book has already become a bestseller in the UK and America. Only in 2005, more than a million copies of “A Brief History” were sold.
In some European countries there is talk of replacing old, boring textbooks with Bill Bryson’s work. The author acts more like a guide leading you through science. The book is packed with fascinating details—from unexpected facts to historical anecdotes—and it has an incredibly broad scope. Here you truly can find almost everything: the Big Bang and the origin of man, the history of the discovery of dinosaurs and a mass lead poisoning, the weighing of the Earth and deep-sea dives, the stories of great and most incredible scientific discoveries. It’s almost as if the whole Universe—from the moment it began to today—fits in these pages. All of this is written vividly, accessibly, and—importantly—briefly.