From the moment Jem Rolls steps onstage, the audience is bombarded by information. Facts. Anecdotes. Creative interpretations and rephrasings. I was stunned into inaction for a few minutes before finally remembering that I was writing a review and that this would be worth writing down.

He tells the story of Leo Szilard, a physicist of the early twentieth century whom he asserts was the first to conceive of nuclear fission. Brilliant, abrasive, and inexhaustible, he built a circle of key friends in physics simply by introducing himself to anyone he thought important enough to talk to. Instrumental at the...