Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. This is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before. Bryson’s challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us and see if there isn’t some way to render them comprehensible to people who never thought they’d be interested in science. It’s not so much about what we know, as how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone figure these things out?? On his journey through time and space he encoutners a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists – such as the painfully shy Henry Cavendish, who worked out important conundrums – such as how much the earth weighted – but who failed to report many of his findings. In all, a revelation of the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.