What on Earth Happened?: The Complete Story of the Planet, Life and People from the Big Bang to the Present Day

Description

In What on Earth Happened?, Christopher Lloyd tells our story from the very beginning of time to the present day, taking giant narrative leaps across millennia and continents. Along the way, he explains exactly how Muslim conquest gave Spain its paella, how the Earth's collision with another young planet created the moon, how dragonflies the size of seagulls emerged out of the prehistoric waters, and how the Big Bang can be detected in your television. Accessible and endlessly entertaining, this massive book draws on disciplines as wide-ranging as astrophysics and anthropology and will appeal to experts, amateur enthusiasts and the simply curious alike. Completed by 250 colourful photographs, maps, historic paintings, engravings and specially commissioned illustrations, What on Earth Happened? takes an entertaining and informed sideways look at the last 13.7 billion years in the life of our universe. Do you know What on Earth Happened? Test your knowledge of the earth in a five minute quiz at www.whatonearthhappened.com

Christopher Lloyd graduated from Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1991 with two scholarships and a double first-class degree in History. He then became a graduate trainee journalist on The Sunday Times newspaper and was trained at the City University where he gained a diploma in newspaper journalism. In 1993, Lloyd was appointed The Sunday Times Innovation Editor and won the 1994 Texaco award for Science Journalist of the Year. In 1997 Lloyd co-founded LineOne, a joint venture Internet Service business owned by BT and News International and later became a director of News Internationals' Internet activities. He qualified in direct marketing with a Cert DM from the Institute of Direct Marketing. In January 2001 Lloyd was recruited to become chief executive of Immersive Education, an education software publishing company based in Oxford. In 2006 he left Immersive Education to spend time travelling across Europe with his wife and two children, both of whom were home-educated. The time spent on the road travelling around Europe inspired him to come up with the concept for What on Earth Happened?

'Compelling ... remarkably far-reaching and even-handed' * Sunday Times * 'An ambitious history of the planet from the Big Bang to the present day' * Daily Telegraph Books of the Year *