Buy now to get the insights from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Sample Insights: 1) Protons are an infinitesimal part of an atom. They are so microscopic that about 500,000,000,000 of them could fit in a dot of ink. 2) A universe is created when a proton shrinks down to one billionth of its normal size into a space so small that the proton looks enormous by comparison. This compact space is then packed with every last mote and particle of matter. This is how a universe is created.
* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. *By reading this summary, you will address the major scientific questions of life and the Universe. It will help you understand where you come from and what planet you live on. *You will also discover that : The Earth is only a tiny part of the Universe. There are many dangers threatening us, both underground and in our solar system. Our ancestors, the Homo Sapiens hominids, did not reveal all their secrets. The world of the infinitely small is as important as the world of the infinitely large. *To begin with, it is necessary to know that we owe our existence only to a hazardous assembly of atoms. Our life is made up of these extraordinary atomic mixtures. This idea brings us to this first observation: our life is hanging by a thread, just like our survival. Indeed, the longevity of the human species is as uncertain as these assemblages of atoms. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!
ABOUT THE BOOK In his introduction to A Short History of Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson describes a childhood experience common to many of us: a brief infatuation with science, with all its potential and possibility. For Bryson, it was inspired by a textbook’s cut-away illustration of the interior strata of the Earth, with the molten core at the center. For myself, it was a children’s biography of Jacques Cousteau. Excited by the nearly endless prospects of science, the questions that could finally satisfy a child’s curiosity, we both reached for more books, and found our budding passions firmly squashed by an impenetrable wall of unfathomable writing. As Bryson writes in his introduction, “there seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting.” Bryson wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything as an antidote to the dry-as-dust science tomes that weigh down students’ backpacks. It is a layman’s love song to science, to its strange history and stranger characters. Published in 2003, it has been become a popular addition to the popular science genre. MEET THE AUTHOR Nicole Cipri is a restless wanderer and passionate writer. A graduate of the Evergreen State School in Olympia, WA, Nicole has since written about such varied topics as modern urban farming, the role of glitterbombing as political theater, and the economic impacts of natural disasters. You can follow her adventures on Twitter, @nicolecipri. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Drama abounded in the 19th century. After the discovery of the first dinosaur fossil in 1784, and with subsequent uncovering of massive bones that belonged to other extinct species, there was an uncomfortable public debate concerning extinctions. Why, after all, would an omniscient God create species of animals only to casually wipe them out? Throughout history, the sciences have routinely butted heads with the Church, a trend that continues today. From geology and paleontology, Bryson moves to chemistry. With its origins in the enigmatic studies of alchemy, chemistry evolved along its own strange path. Bryson tells one exemplifying story, in which an amateur alchemist became convinced the he could distill gold from human urine. “The similarity of color,” Bryson explains, “seems to have been a factor in his conclusion.” In an attempt to prove his hypothesis, the man collected fifty buckets of human urine, which he kept in his cellar. After a few months, the man noted, the substance in the buckets began to glow or explode into flames when exposed to air. He had failed in distilling gold from urine, but he had succeeded in creating phosphorous. Buy a copy to keep reading!
One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
The average age of churchgoers in Britain is now 47. Almost every denomination is experiencing steady decline. How sure can we be that we are still offering something people want to hear? Alison Morgan identifies four clear reasons to be confident: 1. The gospel still speaks to confused teens and weary sceptics. By embracing doubts and welcoming questions it remains open to us to present something which answers people's real needs. 2. The word of truth and the Spirit of power still exercise authority and compel attention. Alison's own experience of ministry in the UK and abroad provides illustrations. 3. Spiritual gifts, given not to excite individuals but in order to renew the church for its core task of mission, are powerfully present and widely recognised and practised. 4. In a time of rapid cultural change, new expressions of church are constantly emerging: this is necessary to guard against vital spirituality sliding into drab religion.
Traditional principles. Contemporary methods. Unparalleled results. This groundbreaking new writing series combines time-tested classical techniques—the imitation and analysis of great writers—with original composition exercises in history, science, biography, and literature. Skills Taught: • One- and two-level outlining • Writing chronological narratives, biographical sketches, descriptions, and sequences across the curriculum • Constructing basic literary essays on fiction and poetry • Researching and documenting source material • First volume of four that will prepare students for high-level rhetoric and composition Features of the program: • Writing assignments are modeled on examples from great literature and classic nonfiction • All source material for assignments is provided—no other books are needed • This Student Workbook encourages independence by directing all assignments to the student • Instructor Text (sold separately) provides scripted dialogue to use when the student has difficulty, plus detailed guidance on how to evaluate the student’s work • First volume of four that will prepare students for high-level rhetoric and composition
So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Guns, Germs, and Steel tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Jared Diamond’s book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. This short summary and analysis of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond includes: Historical context Chapter-by-chapter summaries Detailed timeline of key events Important quotes Fascinating trivia Glossary of terms Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work About Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: Professor Jared Diamond’s informative and fascinating Pulitzer Prize–winning Guns, Germs, and Steel explores a historic question: Why were the Eurasian peoples able to dominate those from other lands? Diamond argues that it was ecology and geography—not race—that shaped the modern world. Societies that developed in regions with fertile land for farming and that had domesticable plants and animals were able to progress more quickly, thereby creating the tools to conquer preliterate cultures. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—from linguistics, genetics, and epidemiology to biology, anthropology, and technology—Guns, Germs, and Steel offers an eloquently argued view of the development of human societies. The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
ABOUT THE BOOK “This is a country that loses a prime minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first non-governmental atomic bomb on its mainland almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly, this is a place worth getting to know.” In a Sunburned Country is Bill Bryson’s seventh book on travel. Published just five years after his much-celebrated travelogue of Great Britain, Notes from a Small Island, the book takes on a much bigger topic: Australia. The book was published just before the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, and some later editions have an appendix chronicling Bryson’s time spent as a spectator. Yet, the focus of the book is on Bryson’s several trips to the massive island over the course of a year. Bryson finds himself hopping back and forth between various points in Australia, his home in New England, and a few other international locales. He never strays for long though, and much of the book is spent in the car and at dozens of hotels, pubs, and attractions along Australia’s 23,000 mile coastline. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Next we meet Alan Howe, an old friend from London. Along with his wife, Carmel, Howe takes Bryson on several adventures to natural wonders, many of which are quite near his vacation home in the hills. After journeying with Howe for a few days, Bryson again strikes out on his own and heads north towards Brisbane. In the midst of his travels, he digresses into a chapter about Australia’s native people—the Aborigines. The history is unbelievable. The Aborigines are an incredibly ancient tribe who still astound scientists today. After a short time walking the beaches of the Gold Coast and extolling the history of the area, Bryson departs, returns home for a time, then returns for the final leg of his trip. In part three, “Around the Edges,” Bryson careens towards the wilder parts of the country. He is accompanied by Allan Sherwin, a friend from London. The most exciting leg of his journey begins as he travels to Great Barrier Reef and braves the sharks and waves native to the area. Buy a copy to keep reading!
Gregory's remarkable career and his scientific work are detailed and critically assessed. Accounts of his heroic 1893 expedition to the Rift Valley (a term he coined) in Kenya (now the Gregory Rift), his first crossing of Spitzbergen, and his resignation as Leader of the first British Antarctic Expedition of 1901, when racing to the Pole under Scott became the priority, draw on unpublished letters. While in Melbourne he published on mining geology and a series of geography textbooks. His 1901 Lake Eyre expedition in Central Australia initiated the phrase 'The Dead Heart of Australia' and controversy over the source of artesian water. In the Chair of Geology in Glasgow from 1904, he built up the largest first-year geology class in the UK, over 400 students. He worked in every field of geology and every continent except Antarctica. He was also involved with the search for a 'homeland' for the Jews in Libya and Angola. He shrewdly realized that Wegener's Continental Drift Theory erroneously supposed that the Pacific Ocean was wider than now before the Atlantic opened. This led to his influential rejection of Continental Drift. He drowned in Peru traversing the Andes having published over 30 books and nearly 400 articles.
Throughout the 19th century the True, the Good, and the Beautiful preserved their precarious existence… But their very earnestness was their undoing… ~ Bertrand Russell In following a dilettante’s story, the reader will find a sense of what culture past and present can offer in the way of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful” — a vision of life that rarely appears in contemporary discourse, even though this conceptual trinity was once a major element in Western civilization’s intellectual foundation. Analytic and artistic voices, evoking this concept in one way or another, are presented as the author chronicles his own intellectual excursions, while reviving a sense of the true dilettante. With a Thousand Antennas indicates how a lively curiosity, a moral sense, and an esthetic sensibility can provide a handle on life, a means to obtain a stable perspective on how to proceed through our allotted time.
