RaveThe New York Review of BooksBlack Hole Blues by Janna Levin provides a case study of how a small group of scientists overcame enormous challenges to build a seemingly impossible experiment that recently made one of the most exciting scientific discoveries of this century … Against all odds, and often in spite of themselves, a group of scientists succeeded in making this measurement. That is the story that Levin tells in Black Hole Blues. Levin is herself a theoretical physicist (as well as an accomplished novelist), but in Black Hole Blues she is more of a journalist, and a good one at that … Levin’s writing is casual and sometimes poetic, and the fortunate existence of an interesting and curious cast of characters makes her book a unique and convincing account of the discovery of gravitational waves. She liberally inserts her own impressions and emotions into the text, and the reader can’t help sharing her surprises, her concerns, and her sympathies.
