JIM HOLT

As he laughs his way though the history of jokes, Jim Holt discovers that most of those we trate are actually hundreds of years of old: Palamedes, a Greek hero of the Trojan War, is credited with inveting the joke (before been stoned to death) and it was Philip the Geart of MAcedon in the 4th Century BC who paid to have the first joke book compiled... Mientras va abriendose paso carcajada a carcajada a traves de la historia de los chistes, Jim Holt descubre que muchos de los que estamos acostumbrados a oir tienen en realidad cientos de años de antiguedad: se le atribuye a Palamedes, un heroe griego de la Guerra de Troya, la invencion del chiste (justo antes de ser lapidado hasta la muerte).

An irreverent sleuth tackles the riddle of existence that has puzzled man since the dawn of time. 'Why is there a world rather than nothing at all?' remains the most curious and most enduring of all metaphysical mysteries. Moving away from the narrower paths of Christopher Hitchens, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, the celebrated essayist Jim Holt now enters this fascinating debate with his broad, lively and deeply informed narrative that traces all our efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. With sly humour and a highly original personal approach Holt takes on the role of cosmological detective. Suggesting that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to God and the Big Bang, he tracks down, among others, an eccentric Oxford philosopher, a Nobel Laureate physicist, a French Buddhist monk, and John Updike just before he died, to pursue this cosmic puzzle from every angle. As he pieces together a solution - while offering useful insights into time, consciousness, and eternity - he sheds fascinating new light on the meaning of existence.

De todos los misterios sobre los que se ha interrogado la humanidad, el más profundo y persistente es el misterio de la existencia. ¿Por que existe un universo, y por que formamos parte de el? ¿Por que hay algo en vez de nada? La pregunta ha fascinado y desconcertado a los grandes pensadores durante siglos, desde Platon hasta Heidegger y Wittgenstein. En este libro Jim Holt asume el papel de detective cosmico e inicia la busqueda de la explicacion ultima acudiendo a los sospechosos habituales: Dios frente al Big Bang. Pero su interrogatorio prosigue luego con una serie de distinguidos y variopintos testigos, entre ellos el premio Nobel de Fisica Steven Weinberg, el teologo cristiano Richard Swinburne, el matematico platonico Roger Penrose y hasta el difunto escritor John Updike