The Measure of All Things

September 2, 2002
The audio versions of such recent bestselling books about measurement as Dava Sobel's Longitude
and Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World
have proved popular, but it's hard to imagine a similar fate for this dry, often arch reading of Alder's lively epic about the two 18th-century French astronomers who perfected the metric system. Alder retraced the route of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre François André Mechain on a bicycle and succeeded in solving an authentic 200-year-old mystery about a mistake made and covered up by Mechain, but very little of that energy or excitement survives the subdued, soporific intonations of reader Jennings. (Also distracting is his occasional use of a French accent often reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch.) Perhaps because of its abridgement, the audio version never really brings to life the differences between its two main characters that made the original enterprise so fascinating. Simultaneous release with the Free Press hardcover (Forecasts, July 1).