David Le Breton is a French academic who has a long body of work of a sociological and anthropological nature. In this book we find ourselves before an essay in which the phenomenon of laughter is analyzed in detail and with a historical perspective, as a social rite that has been practiced at all times and in all cultures. The complex relationships that religions have established and the connotations that each culture imprints on laughter are reviewed, and these are not only positive, but also negative and even violent. The translator, Jorge Brash Guillaumín, delivers a version adapted to the Hispanic-American culture to make understandable the witticisms and jokes that the author uses to illustrate how laughter works in the different communities.