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The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less)
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's summary
Covering 13.8 billion years, a calculatedly concise, wryly intelligent history of everything, from the Big Bang to the advent of human civilization.
With wonder, wit, and flair - and in record time and space - geophysicist David Bercovici explains how everything came to be everywhere, from the creation of stars and galaxies to the formation of Earth's atmosphere and oceans to the origin of life and human civilization. Bercovici marries humor and legitimate scientific intrigue, rocketing listeners across nearly 14 billion years and making connections between the essential theories that give us our current understanding of topics as varied as particle physics, plate tectonics, and photosynthesis. Bercovici's unique literary endeavor is a treasure trove of real, compelling science and fascinating history, providing both science lovers and complete neophytes with an unforgettable introduction to the fields of cosmology, geology, climate science, human evolution, and more.
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Complicated in its simplicity
- By Philomath on 06-13-17
By: Professor Brian Cox, and others
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
- By: David Christian
- Narrated by: Jamie Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- By 11104 on 09-05-18
By: David Christian
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Catching Stardust
- Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System
- By: Natalie Starkey
- Narrated by: Alison Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious – comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants.
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Chasing star stuff always results in technological advances
- By Richard Duede on 12-30-18
By: Natalie Starkey
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The Planets
- By: Professor Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Mercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun’s expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.
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baroque and flowery verbiage
- By Chris on 01-14-20
By: Professor Brian Cox, and others
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Life on the Edge
- The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
- By: Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: Nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation?
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More woo than new
- By Gary on 09-09-15
By: Johnjoe McFadden, and others
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Life's Engines
- How Microbes Made Earth Habitable
- By: Paul G. Falkowski
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built - and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes.
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Best Science Book Ever Written. Period.
- By serine on 07-28-15
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Calculating the Cosmos
- How Mathematics Unveils the Universe
- By: Ian Stewart
- Narrated by: Dana Hickox
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In Calculating the Cosmos, Ian Stewart presents an exhilarating guide to the cosmos, from our solar system to the entire universe. He describes the architecture of space and time, dark matter and dark energy, how galaxies form, why stars implode, how everything began, and how it's all going to end. He considers parallel universes, the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, what forms extraterrestrial life might take, and the likelihood of life on Earth being snuffed out by an asteroid.
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Crank alert: rejects modern cosmology
- By James Weisner on 03-20-17
By: Ian Stewart
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Five Billion Years of Solitude
- The Search for Life Among the Stars
- By: Lee Billings
- Narrated by: Lee Billings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
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Since its formation nearly five billion years ago, our planet has been the sole living world in a vast and silent universe. Now, Earth's isolation is coming to an end. Over the past two decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of "exoplanets" orbiting other stars, including some that could be similar to our own world. Studying those distant planets for signs of life will be crucial to understanding life's intricate mysteries right here on Earth. In a firsthand account of this unfolding revolution, Lee Billings draws on interviews with top researchers.
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Bloated
- By Dr A on 01-09-14
By: Lee Billings
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Genesis
- The Story of How Everything Began
- By: Guido Tonelli, Erica Segre - translator, Simon Carnell - translator
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
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A breakout best seller in Italy, now available for American listeners for the first time, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began is a short, humanistic tour of the origins of the universe, earth, and life - drawing on the latest discoveries in physics to explain the seven most significant moments in the creation of the cosmos.
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This is soooo boring to listen to
- By A. Galer on 02-27-23
By: Guido Tonelli, and others
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Life’s Ratchet
- How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos
- By: Peter M. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
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The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
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For biologists to learn single molecule biophysics
- By A Synthetic Biologist on 09-04-14
By: Peter M. Hoffman
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A Most Improbable Journey
- A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves
- By: Walter Alvarez
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Big History, the field that studies the entire known past of our universe to give context to human existence, has so far been the domain of historians. Geologist Walter Alvarez - best known for his Impact Theory explaining dinosaur extinction - makes a compelling case for a new, science-first approach to Big History.
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Learned so much
- By Niki on 12-09-18
By: Walter Alvarez
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
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The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson
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What listeners say about The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less)
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- AngelBar
- 03-25-21
Revealing
I had no knowledge of how important Plate Tectonics were to the generation of the Big Bang ;-)
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- gerald congdon
- 03-26-22
Easy to Understand, but I'm a Biochemist
If you ever want to know what Leonard and Sheldon are talking about on the Big Bang Theory, give it a whirl!
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- ReaderBadAss
- 03-03-21
great book
great reading. very informative and highly enjoyable. a good starting point for further readings going deeper in specific subjects.
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- D.Ryan
- 10-31-22
Amazing
I was skeptical because I have very little scientific knowledge. However, I learned so much. This was an enjoyable read!
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-14-21
Good synopsis of the universe's creation.
I hesitate to say an easy to follow beginners guide to the quantum physics involved in the creation of the universe, but a good beginners guide none the less. I have only an interest in the subject, no formal education. It was at tines hard to follow in audio format. Some of the concepts are hard to comprehend while driving and not having your full attention on the subject matter. But this left me lost far less often than a couple other books on the topic I have listened to.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Galaxy deep
- 12-28-20
Great synapses of the history of science
Great synapses of the history of science as we know it. A little fore knowledge maybe useful.
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2 people found this helpful
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- James E. Pfeffer
- 08-06-23
Tremendous
I adored this book. I learned more from Bercovici than I did from books more than twice as long. I wasn’t lucky enough to have been one of his Yale students. Owning “Origins of Everything” is a lovely consolation prize.
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- Lab Scientist
- 07-12-21
A Shorter History of Nearly Everything
If you're like me, you often will seek out books or articles that cover the same topic to peer into what authors will deem most important to mention. If you read Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", you will find here the subjects Bercovici saw fit to condense or elongate to create this book. Some people seem to really be upset by the alleged "humans bad" sections, but that's better left for a discussion at the end of this review.
To start, this book has about 13 more years of science on Bryson's book, and the accompaniment of a geophysicist that creates a heavier emphasis on hard science that almost totally removes any narrative components one might be seeking from a more "casual" science book. This doesn't harm the book by any means, but it does lead to odd pacing choices and the occasional moving past what some might consider more crucial in the writing of a book on the origins of The Universe and our Solar System. Of these, some might wonder why there is a lack of discussion on universal expansion, star formation, and a puzzling amount of complexity in some parts and lack of complexity in others. And while it does have much more evidence upon which it can condense concepts, chapter 3 in particular approaches black holes from a clearly dated science that has now begun to better understand them -- although I do understand this may not be the most up-to-date version.
As a whole, it is a book that's core goal is to squeeze together billions of years of time and space. The overall success of this is amplified by the narration of Jim Meskimen. While there are definitely dry sections in most chapters, Meskimen's meter, tone, and enunciation create an experience that brightens up nearly every topic. Even when I found myself pondering an odd inclusion of the "one meter hurdle" (which in my brief research seems to be a problem published a decade ago in one book and never mentioned again in an astrophysics/geophysics texts -- an oddity for sure), the narration perfectly mirrored what I would imagine an excited/perplexed scientist would sound like when describing it.
Now, to quickly mention the inclusion of global warming/fossil fuel usage of humans some people seem to be upset about. I found it odd after seeing some reviews that underpinned this as a negative aspect when Bercovici's analytical way of describing it, coupled with Meskimen's performance, felt like a truly brief mention -- more of a footnote than a dedicated scolding of fossil fuel usage. What I did find abrasive was the out-of-left-field discussion on colonialism and its apparent proclivity in humans. Not at all what I expected would be included in a book like this, and the only glaringly unnecessary inclusion I could think of for a book like this.
While the "story" here is fascinating, the pacing and general cherry picking of certain complex subjects bring it down if you're someone who enjoys the weaving of anecdotes into science books. Despite this, Meskimen's performance brings to life what could otherwise be a more dry and analytical approach to our knowledge of The Universe written here. Highly recommended for those who have a fascination with space and yearning to understand the mysteries, and luck of physics and time, that led to Earth and Humans.
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- alady
- 07-16-21
Good for a free listen
This was pretty good, I have listened to many science non-fiction books and yet I managed to learn new things. There were definitely sections that were very dry/boring, but once you get past them there is nuggets of good stuff. I would listen to it again (and probably will in 6 months to remember what I have forgotten!)
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- Peewee colwell
- 02-04-22
Interesting
great view points on everything I will listen to it several times over again
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