Synopsis
The Washington Post Notable Non-Fiction of 2013
“I can imagine few more enjoyable ways of thinking than to read this book.”—Sarah Bakewell, New York Times Book Review, front-page review
About Jim Holt
See more books from this AuthorMr. Holt’s wit and intellect never fail him, however. He’s good company on the page, strewing offbeat words like a latter-day William F. Buckley Jr...
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An... | See more reviews from NY Times...I can imagine few more enjoyable ways of thinking than to read this book.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An... | See more reviews from NY TimesThe astrophysicist Sir Bernard Lovell once said that trying to explain why there is something rather than nothing could "tear the individual's mind asunder". Holt's elegant and enlightening book suggests he was wrong.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An... | See more reviews from GuardianHolt takes us on an absorbing journey through the physics, philosophy and religion of existence. Along the way he talks to people who have spent their lives mulling the nature of being and nothingness.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An... | See more reviews from GuardianMr. Holt presents all these possible explanations—and others—in the manner of trial balloons. We are to draw our own conclusions.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An... | See more reviews from WSJ online...Holt...takes a perverse pleasure in doubling back, raising questions and then poking holes in them at once.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An... | See more reviews from LA TimesWhat is special about Why Does the World Exist? is that Holt and the experts he talks to apply humour, good sense, and a dose of incredulity and wonder to the problem.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An...I only absorbed a fraction of it, but all these bits of new information are, like protons and electrons buzzing about my synapses, creating an elixir of imaginative universes to contemplate.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An...If this question tickles you, you will enjoy Holt’s book. It would be a hard slog otherwise.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An...Holt does a brilliant job of making their musings as clear as possible to the man in the street.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An......an entertaining introduction to a vast range of argument and speculation that would take more lifetimes to master than any of us has at his disposal.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An......his current book is the culmination of years pursuing this ultimate question with the best minds in the realms of quantum cosmology, philosophy, and theology all over the world.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An...Hurray for Jim Holt, who cracks our formulaic stupor with his crisp, jolly new book, "Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story."
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An......the most interesting parts of the book come not from Holt's subjects, but from his own musings.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An...Holt writes a warm, humane, funny, gripping and poignant tale about Being and Nothingness in the 21st century, a book that every educated person should read.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An......the answer, which unfolds near the end, in a letter to one of the Big Thinkers he has interviewed, is disappointing.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An......one wishes Holt would probe deeper or force the ideas he happens upon into a more challenging conflict.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An......it does what real science writing should: It helps us feel the fullness of the problem. This is a book that ends, literally and figuratively, in opacity and incompleteness.
Read Full Review of Why Does the World Exist?: An...An aggregated and normalized score based on 484 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes
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