Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he cant contain his curiosity about the world around him. This book is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.