Florian Freistetter Audiobooks

A History of the Universe in 100 Stars: astronomy told one star at a time

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.1/5 average

50 listener ratings

Who is Florian Freistetter?

One hundred stars, one hundred short chapters, and the history of the universe threaded between them. That is the structure Florian Freistetter chose for A History of the Universe in 100 Stars, and structure is often the truest signal of how a science writer thinks.

The choice implies a particular temperament: a preference for the concrete over the abstract, and a trust that individual objects can carry ideas which would sag if stated plainly. Our science and engineering shelf holds no shortage of grand surveys, and this one earns its place by declining to be one.

Florian Freistetter in audiobooks

Richard Burnip reads, over roughly eight and a half hours, and the hundred-part construction makes this unusually well suited to listening. Each section closes cleanly, so the book can be left at a set of traffic lights and picked up two days later without any loss of thread.

Ratings are steady across a decent spread of votes, which in popular science generally means the explanations hold up for listeners without a physics degree. Start at the first star and let the sequence do its work, because the ordering has a logic worth respecting. The audiobooks below are ready when you are.