A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

The reason for this is that the universe bends, in a way we can’t adequately imagine, in conformance with Einstein’s theory of relativity (which

The bottom line is that life is amazing and gratifying, perhaps even miraculous, but hardly impossible—as we repeatedly attest with our own modest existences. To

But the record claim for durability so far is one made by Russell Vreeland and colleagues at West Chester University in Pennsylvania in 2000, when they announced that they had resuscitated 250-million-year-old bacteria called Bacillus permians

is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours—arguably

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this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here—and by “we” I mean every living thing.