Introduction Part 1: The fascination of spinning tops 1. The desire to master time When the spell is broken Life's time Urns and sepulchres: the birth of past, present and future 2. Our time The sense of time When Chronos ran wild and free Caging time The Triumph of Chronos Part 2: Where time stops 1. The odd couple Time which melts and shatters: Soft clocks: Fantastic accuracy: making money from relativity: Great philosophers and Little Red Riding-Hood 2. The long history of time The beginning of time The end of time Time in the world of great cosmic distances Magnificent illusions and fantastic chimeras When the energy of three suns travels lightly over the waves of Space-time 3. When time stops The clocks of the Paris Commune The Hellish places where time vanishes The spectacular end of Betelgeuse The terror champions Physics at the points of empty time Part 3: Between ephemeral existence and eternal life 1. The life of particles A world full of weirdness Masses which explode and times which dilate disproportionately Cosmic super-accelerators The little red and white brick house 2. The time of the infinitely small A handful of chosen ones In the ivanescent realm of the ephemeral The reckless life of muons Beauty, charm and the timidity of quarks 3.

A very special relationship A Castor and Pollux like-existence Grabbing Kairos by the hair Measuring time with energy The raids of the messengers, Hermes' protégés The perfect couple 4. Can time's arrow be reversed? An equation reveals a world whose existence nobody had suspected The Holy Grail of symmetry The secret of a poem, or a fine wine Entropy and the irreversibility of time 5. The dream of killing Chronos The ancient poetry of the idea of stopping time Time's assassins Nosferatu Epilogue: The brief time Acknowledgements Index.