How the Universe Got Its Spots

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. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine