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.A Short History of Nearly Everythingis his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science.

The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

Bill Brysons bestselling travel books includeThe Lost ContinentandNotes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. Another travel book,A Walk in the Woods,has become a major film starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson. His new number oneSunday Timesbestseller isThe Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island.

His acclaimed book on the history of science,A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Societys Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Unions highest literary award. He has written books on language, on Shakespeare, on history, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoirThe Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. His last critically lauded bestsellers wereAt Home: a Short History of Private Life, andOne Summer: America 1927

Bill Bryson was born in the American Midwest, and now lives in the UK. A former Chancellor of Durham University, he was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England for five years, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society.