HOW THE UNIVERSE GOT ITS SPOTS Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space

This epistolary account of personal migration and cosmic speculation breaks almost all the rules of the genre. In a series of edited letters to her mother, Janna Levin describes her personal life and professional thinking as an ex-patriot theoretical physicist. The physics—a carefully described series of snapshots of the world after Einstein that leads to a series of questions about the size and (just as important) the shape of the universe—is not easy going for the casual listener. Many will want to go back and listen to particular passages again. But the scientific material is provocative, non-quantitative, and beautifully described. Narrator Christine Williams gives the production its soul. Her clear, unhurried voice suffuses everything with Levin’s loneliness in a cosmos and a life that do not give up secrets easily. F.C. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2010]