Bill Bryson

The author of A Walk in the Woods traces the Big Bang through the rise of civilization, documenting his work with a host of the world's most advanced scientists and mathematicians to explain why things are the way they are. Reprint. 125,000 first printing.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

"From the bestselling author of A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body"--

A Guide for Occupants

The Body

Traces the author's adventurous trek along the Appalachian Trail past its natural pleasures, human eccentrics, and offbeat comforts.

Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

A Walk in the Woods

From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

A Short History of Private Life

At Home

Notes from a small island

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson--the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent--brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

The Mother Tongue

Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies -- in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales. Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies--in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales.

Travels in Europe

Neither Here Nor There

In a sunburned country

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.

The World as Stage

Shakespeare

An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town.

Travels in Small Town America

The Lost Continent

notes on returning to America after 20 years away

I'm a stranger here myself

A Memoir

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Bill Bryson, who gave glorious voice to The Mother Tongue, now celebrates her magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood...and exactly why Mr. Yankee Doodle call his befeathered cap "Macaroni."

Made in America

More Notes from a Small Island

The Road to Little Dribbling

From the Royal Society comes a peerless collection of all-new science writing. Contributors include Margaret Atwood, Steve Jones, Richard Dawkins, James Gleick, Richard Holmes, and Neal Stephenson writing on subjects ranging from metaphysics to nuclear ...

The Story of Science & the Royal Society

Seeing Further

A travel writer with little background knowledge of Africa recounts his journey to Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, where he visited slums, historic sites, natural wonders, refugee camps, and relief projects.

Bill Bryson's African Diary

يصف المؤلف بيل برايسون نفسه بأنه الرحالة المتردد ، ولكن حتى حين يبقى آمنًا في المنزل فإنه لا يستطيع أن يوقف فضوله حيال العالم الذي حوله . كتاب موجز تاريخ كل شيء تقريبًا هو مغامرة هدفها فهم كل شيء سبق أن حدث منذ الانفجار الكبير حتى نشوء الحضارة ؛ كيف كنا في الماضي ، وكيف وصلنا إلى ما نحن عليه . إنه رحلة تنويرية لاكتشاف العالم ، تتعدى حدود الزمان والمكان ، بحيث تكون الصورة متكاملة أكثر من ذي قبل . " يقدم الكتاب زادًا تربويًا رائعًا ، وستكون جميع المدارس أمكنة أفضل لو كان هذا الكتاب المقرر العلمي الرئيس في المناهج " تيم فلانيري ، الملحق الأدبي لجريدة التايمز العبيكان 2017

A Short History of Nearly Everything New edition

موجز تاريخ كل شيء تقريبًا

Bill Bryson’s own fascination with science began with a battered old school book he had when he was about ten or eleven years old. It had an illustration that captivated him–a diagram showing Earth’s interior as it would look if you cut into it with a large knife and removed about a quarter of its bulk. The idea of lots of startled cars and people falling off the edge of that sudden cliff (and 4,000 miles is a pretty long way to fall) was what grabbed him in the beginning, but gradually his attention turned to what the picture was trying to teach him: namely that Earth’s interior is made up of several different layers of materials, and at the very centre is a glowing sphere of iron and nickel, as hot as the Sun’s surface, according to the caption. And he very clearly remembers thinking: “How do they know that?” Bill’s storytelling skill makes the “How?” and, just as importantly, the “Who?” of scientific discovery entertaining and accessible for all ages. He covers the wonder and mystery of time and space, the frequently bizarre and often obsessive scientists and the methods they used, and the mind-boggling fact that, somehow, the universe exists and against all odds, life came to be on this wondrous planet we call home.

A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

A revised and updated edition of a humorous primer on the English language, expanded for an American audience, contains entries on correct and questionable usage, a glossary, and a pronunciation guide. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain’s favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world.

Bill Bryson

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