Sagan, Carl 1934–1996

(Carl Edward Sagan)

PERSONAL: Born November 9, 1934, New York, NY; died of pneumonia, a complication of myelodysplasia (a bone marrow disease), December 19, 1996, in Seattle, WA; son of Samuel (a cloth cutter and, later, a factory manager) and Rachel (Gruber) Sagan; married Lynn Alexander (a scientist), June 16, 1957 (divorced, 1963); married Linda Salzman (a painter), April 6, 1968 (divorced); married Ann Druyan (a writer); children: (first marriage) Dorion Solomon, Jeremy Ethan; (second marriage) Nicholas; (third marriage) Alexandra, Rachel, Samuel Democritus. Education: University of Chicago, A.B. (with general and special honors), 1954, B.S., 1955, M.A., 1956, Ph.D., 1960.

CAREER: Scientist, author. University of California, Berkeley, Miller research fellow in astronomy, 1960–62; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1962–68, assistant professor of astronomy; Smithsonian Institution, Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, astrophysicist, 1962–68; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, associate professor, 1968–70, professor of astronomy and space sciences, 1970–96, David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences, 1976–96, director of Laboratory for Planetary Studies, 1968–96, associate director of Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, 1972–81; visiting professor at many universities throughout the United States. President, Carl Sagan Productions, Inc. (television programming), 1981–96. President, Planetary Society, 1979–96. Fellow, Robotics Institute, CarnegieMellon University, 1982–96; Distinguished Visiting Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 1986–96. Member of Committee to Review Project Blue Book (U.S. Air Force), 1956–66. Experimenter, Mariner 2 mission to Venus, 1962, Mariner 9 and Viking missions to Mars, Voyager mission to the outer solar system, Galileo mission to Jupiter; designer of Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 interstellar messages. Member of council, Smithsonian Institution, 1975–85; member, board of directors, Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, 1972–77; member, Usage Panel, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1976–96; member, Fellowship Panel, John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1976–81; chair, Study Group on Machine Intelligence and Robotics, NASA, 1977–79; member, board of directors, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, 1980–96; member, board of advisors, Children's Health Fund, 1988–96; co-chair, Science, Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, 1988–96; member, International Board of Advisors, Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, 1991–96; member, Advisory Council, National Institutes for the Environment, 1991–96; member, American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1983–96. Judge, National Book Awards, 1975. Member of various advisory groups of National Aeronautics and Space Administration; consultant to National Academy of Science; member of advisory panel, Civil Space Station Study, Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress, 1982–96.

MEMBER: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (fellow), Council on Foreign Relations, International Astronomical Union (member of organizing committee, Commission of Physical Study of Planets), International Council of Scientific Unions (vice chair, working group on moon and planets, committee on space research), International Academy of Astronautics, International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (member of council, 1980–96), PEN International, American Astronomical Society (councillor; chair, division of planetary sciences, 1975–76), American Physical Society (fellow), American Geophysical Union (fellow; president, planetology section, 1980–82), American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow; chair, astronomy section, 1975), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (fellow), American Astronautical Society (fellow; member of council, 1976–81), Federation of American Scientists (member of council, 1977–81, 1984–88; sponsor), Society for the Study of Evolution, British Interplanetary Society (fellow), Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Genetics Society of America, Authors Guild, Authors League of America, Writers Guild of America, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (fellow), Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Explorers Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation research fellowship at Harvard University, 1963–67; A. Calvert Smith Prize, Harvard University, 1964; National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Apollo Achievement Award, 1970; Prix Galabert (international astronautics prize), 1973; John W. Campbell Memorial Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1974, for The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective; Pulitzer Prize for literature, 1978, for The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence; Cosmos named among best books for young adults, American Library Association, 1980; Academy of Family Films and Family Television Award for Best Television Series of 1980, American Council for Better Broadcasts Citation for Highest Quality Television Programming of 1980–81, Silver Plaque from Chicago Film Festival, President's Special Award from Western Educational Society for Telecommunication, 1981, George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Television Programming, University of Georgia, 1981, and Ohio State University annual award for television excellence, 1982, all for Cosmos television series; American Book Award nominations for Cosmos (hardcover) and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (paperback), both 1981; Humanist of the Year Award, American Humanist Association, 1981; Hugo Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1982, for the book Cosmos; John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award, American Astronautical Society, 1983; Locus Award, 1986, for Contact; Arthur C. Clarke Award for Exploration and Development of Space, 1984; Peter Lavan Award for Humanitarian Service, Bard College, 1984; New Priorities Award, Fund for New Priorities in America, 1984; Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize Award, for "outstanding contributions to world peace," 1984; SANE National Peace Award, 1984; Olive Branch Award, New York University, 1984, 1986, and 1989; Physicians for Social Responsibility Annual Award for Public Service, 1985; Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest, with Richard P. Turco and others, for "the discovery of nuclear winter," American Physical Society, 1985; Nahum Goldmann Medal, "in recognition of distinguished service to the cause of peace and many accomplishments in science and public affairs," Word Jewish Congress, 1986; Brit HaDorot Award, Shalom Center, 1986; Annual Award of Merit, American Consulting Engineers Council, 1986; Maurice Eisendrath Award for Social Justice, Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1987; Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal, Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, 1987; George F. Kennan Peace Award, SANE/Freeze, 1988; Helen Caldicott Peace Leadership Award, with Ann Druyan, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, 1988; UCLA Medal, University of California at Los Angeles, 1991; Distinguished Leadership award, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1993; First Carl Sagan Understanding of Science award, 1994; Los Angeles Times Award for Science and Technology, 1996, for The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Honorary degrees from many U.S. universities.

WRITINGS:

(With W.W. Kellogg) The Atmospheres of Mars and Venus, National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC), 1961.

Organic Matter and the Moon, National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC), 1961.

(With I.S. Shklovskii) Intelligent Life in the Universe, Holden-Day (San Francisco, CA), 1963.

(With Jonathan Norton Leonard) Planets, Time-Life Science Library (New York, NY), 1966.

Planetary Exploration: The Condon Lectures, University of Oregon Press (Eugene, OR), 1970.

(Editor, with Tobias C. Owen and Harlan J. Smith) Planetary Atmospheres, D. Reidel (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor, with K.Y. Kondratyev and M. Rycroft) Space Research XI, two volumes, Akademie Verlag, 1971.

(With R. Littauer and others) The Air War in Indochina, Center for International Studies, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), 1971.

(Editor, with Thorton Page) UFOs: A Scientific Debate, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1972.

(Editor) Soviet-American Conference on the Problems of Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1973.

(Editor) Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1973.

(With Ray Bradbury, Arthur Clarke, Bruce Murray, and Walter Sullivan) Mars and the Mind of Man, Harper (New York, NY), 1973.

(With R. Berendzen, A. Montagu, P. Morrison, K. Stendhal, and G. Wald) Life beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, U.S. Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1973.

The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective (selection of several book clubs, including Library of Science Book Club and Natural History Book Club), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1973, new edition published as Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, with essays by Freeman Dyson, Ann Druyan, and David Morrison, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Other Worlds, Bantam (New York, NY), 1975.

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Random House (New York, NY), 1977.

(With others) Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Random House (New York, NY), 1978, commemorative edition with CD-ROM, Warner New Media, 1992.

Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

Cosmos (also see below), Random House (New York, NY), 1980, new edition, 2002.

(With R. Garwin and others) The Fallacy of Star Wars, Vintage Books (New York, NY), 1984.

(With Paul R. Ehrlich, Donald Kennedy, and Walter Orr Roberts) The Cold and the Dark, Norton (New York, NY), 1984.

(With Ann Druyan) Comet, Random House (New York, NY), 1985, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Contact (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Richard Turco) A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, Random House (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Ann Druyan) Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, Random House (New York, NY), 1992.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Random House (New York, NY), 1995.

Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

Also author of The Quest for Life Beyond the Earth. Author of radio and television scripts, including (with Ann Druyan and Steven Soter) Cosmos series, Public Broadcasting System, 1980, and scripts for Voice of America, American Chemical Society radio series, and British Broadcasting Corp. Contributor to Encyclopedia Americana, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Whole Earth Catalog, 1971. Contributor of more than 600 papers to scientific journals, and of articles to periodicals, including National Geographic, Saturday Review, Discovery, Washington Post, Natural History, Scientific American, and New York Times. Icarus: International Journal of Solar System Studies, associate editor, 1962–68, editor-in-chief, 1968–79; member of editorial board, Origins of Life, 1974–96, Climatic Change, 1976–96, and Science, 1979–96.

ADAPTATIONS: Planets has been adapted as a film. Contact was adapted as a film in 1997 starring Jodie Foster.

SIDELIGHTS: As one of the most widely known and outspoken scientists in America, Carl Sagan made both his living and a considerable reputation in astronomy, biology, physics, and the emerging science of exobiology, the study of extraterrestrial life. In his best-selling books, such as The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, and in the extremely popular television series Cosmos (itself adapted into book form), Sagan, according to Frederic Golden of Time, "sends out an exuberant message: science is not only vital for humanity's future well-being, but it is rousing good fun as well."

The Cornell University-based scientist, who published his first research article ("Radiation and the Origin of the Gene") at age twenty-two, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the son of an American-born mother and a Russian-immigrant father. Sagan described himself as a science-fiction addict from an early age who became hooked on astronomy after learning that each star in the evening sky represented a distant sun. He told Golden: "This just blew my mind. Until then the universe had been my neighborhood. Now I tried to imagine how far away I'd have to move the sun to make it as faint as a star. I got my first sense of the immensity of the universe." In a New Yorker interview, Sagan told Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr.: "I didn't make a decision to pursue astronomy; rather, it just grabbed me and I had no thought of escaping. But I didn't know that you could get paid for it…. Then, in my sophomore year in high school, my biology teacher … told me he was pretty sure Harvard paid [noted astronomer] Harold Shapley a salary. That was a splendid day—when I began to suspect that if I tried hard I could do astronomy full time, not just part time." At sixteen, Sagan entered the University of Chicago on a scholarship. As early as his undergraduate days, the student began earning a reputation as a maverick; according to Golden, Sagan organized a popular campus lecture series and included himself as one of the speakers. At the same time, he shunned traditional courses of study in favor of his own intellectual pursuits.

On leaving the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960, Sagan began research at Harvard University where, with colleague James Pollack, he challenged standard scientific views on the periodic lightening and darkening surface of Mars. Sagan's theory—that the alternating shades of surface light were caused by wind storms—was confirmed several years later from the Mariner 9 Mars or-biter. Sagan's proposals regarding the Venus greenhouse effect, the organic haze on Titan, and other matters, while initially debated by scientists, have come to be accepted by the scientific community at large. Speculations of that type cemented Sagan's image as an iconoclast.

Sagan's writing career evolved along with his scientific career. In 1963 he became interested in a Russian book called Intelligent Life in the Universe and was given permission to work on its English translation. In the process Sagan added ten new chapters (more than doubling the original length of the book), thus becoming, according to Stuart Bauer in New York, "more than 60 per cent responsible for the first comprehensive treatment of the entire panorama of natural evolution, covering the origin of the universe, the evolution of the stars and planets, and the beginning of life on earth." (Bauer credits Sagan's expansion of the Russian original for the fact that Intelligent Life in the Universe has since gone into fourteen printings.) The scientist further distinguished himself as an expert in these fields in 1971, when, according to Bauer, "the Encyclopaedia Britannica invited [Sagan] to write its definitive 25,000-word essay on 'Life'; in 1973, in a manner of speaking, he took out a patent on it—U.S. Patent 3,756,934 for the production of amino acids from gaseous mixtures."

The Dragons of Eden, Sagan's first popular book to delve outside the study of astronomy, was published in 1977. Thereafter, it won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1978. The book explored the history and evolution of human intelligence, explaining the current state of research in the field and speculating on what future researchers might discover. Robert Manning of Atlantic Monthly thought The Dragons of Eden to be "rational, elegant and witty" but warned that reading parts of it is "akin to climbing the Matterhorn without crampons or ice ax. One must pay attention to every crack and cranny." R.J. Herrnstein wrote in Commentary that although the author is "asking his readers to change their minds about almost nothing," he does so with "grace, humor and style." John Updike, on the other hand, found fault with the author's choice of subject matter. "Versatile though he is," Updike remarked in the New Yorker, "[Sagan] is simply not enough saturated in his subject to speculate; what he can do is summarize and, to a limited degree, correlate the results of scattered and tentative modern research on the human brain…. [His] speculations, where they are not cheerfully wild, seem tacked on and trivial."

The inspiration for Sagan's next work, Broca's Brain, came during a tour of the Musee de l'Homme in Paris, where he came upon a collection of jars containing human brains. Examining one of the jars, he found he was holding the brain of Paul Broca, a distinguished nineteenth-century anatomist. The idea for a book "flashed through his mind," according to Judy Klemsrud of the New York Times Book Review. Broca's Brain, a compilation of essays ranging in topic from ancient astronauts to mathematically-gifted horses, became another bestseller, prompting Sagan to tell Klemsrud that he believed "the public is a lot brighter and more interested in science than they're given credit for…. They're not numbskulls. Thinking scientifically is as natural as breathing."

Most critics praised Sagan's scientific expertise as exhibited in Broca's Brain, but some, including Maureen Bodo of National Review, thought that "Sagan is on less firm ground when speculating on semi-philosophical topics." This view was shared by New York Times Book Review critic Robert Jastrow. Although Jastrow wrote that "the skeptical chapters on pseudoscience … are delightful" and that Sagan was "capable of first-class reasoning when disciplined," he added that the scientist "soars all too often on flights of meaningless fancy." Ultimately, though, Jastrow found Broca's Brain worth reading, as did Science magazine's Richard Berendzen. "For the nonspecialist," Berendzen wrote, "the book will be frustrating reading, with uneven technical detail, loose connections, and an overabundance of polysyllabic jargon. But if the reader can make it through, this curious volume can answer old questions, raise new ones, open vistas, become unforgettable. In short, Sagan has done it again. The book's title might be Broca's Brain, but its subject is Sagan's."

Television played an important part in Carl Sagan's career. In the early 1970s he appeared on The Tonight Show and, as New York's Bauer puts it, "launched into a cosmological crash course for adults. It was one of the great reckless solos of late-night television." After the scientist finished his long monologue on the evolution of the earth, Bauer wrote, "one was willing to bet that if a million teenagers had been watching, at least a hundred thousand vowed on the spot to become full-time astronomers like him." Late in 1980, Sagan's involvement with the medium led to the television series Cosmos, an eight million-dollar Public Broadcasting System production that eventually reached a worldwide audience of 400 million viewers—or, as Sagan preferred to think of it, three percent of the earth's population. Filmed over a period of three years on forty locations in twelve countries, Cosmos, introduced and narrated by Sagan, and written by Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, used elaborate sets and special effects to explain the wide spectrum of the universe, from the expanse of a solar black hole to the intricacies of a living cell.

Cosmos is "dazzling" in its theme and presentation, observed Harry F. Waters in Newsweek; yet the reviewer felt that "Sagan undermines the show's scientific credibility by lapsing into fanciful speculation…. Equally unsettling is Sagan's perpetual expression of awestruck reverence as he beholds the heavens." John S. DeMott, who likewise found Sagan's presentation "unabashedly awestruck," wrote in Time that "each segment [of Cosmos] has flair, excellent special effects and a dash of good ethical showmanship" and called Sagan "a man clearly in love with his subject."

As Cosmos became public television's most highly-rated series (surpassed only in 1990 by The Civil War), Sagan's book adaptation, Cosmos, proved equally popu-lar, topping the bestseller lists for seventy weeks. In a Christian Science Monitor review, Robert C. Cowen found the book to be "as magnificent, challenging, and idiosyncratic … as the TV series." James A. Michener, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Cosmos "a cleverly written, imaginatively illustrated summary … about our universe." Sagan's style, according to Michener, was "iridescent, with lights flashing upon unexpected juxtapositions of thought." The reviewer summed up, "Cosmos is an inviting smorgasbord of nutritious ideas well worth sampling." Citing the author's "personal voice," Washington Post Book World critic Eliot Marshall felt that Sagan "lends his work a resonance and coherence it would otherwise lack." Marshall concluded that Cosmos is "a little overbearing, but still informative and entertaining."

Sagan followed the success of Cosmos with other works, including his first novel, Contact. This science-fiction thriller centers on the character of Eleanor Arroway, an astronomer who, as Sagan did, leads the search for life on other planets. In Contact, however, Earth receives a message from an alien civilization on the star Vega (making the inhabitants "Vegans"), which tosses Eleanor into a chaotic mix of media and politics. Sagan's background injects the tale with pertinent and realistic details and provides support for the contemplation of loftier issues of science, intellectualism, and politics. (The book was later adapted as an award-winning film, starring Jodie Foster as Eleanor.)

Many reviewers noted that Sagan's enthusiasm for his subject permeated the novel. In the Voice Literary Supplement, Eliot Fremont-Smith commented, "what I thought would be the biggest fault … [Sagan's] cloying sincerity, becomes the greatest strength. Contact is an enthusiast's book and those benzels really spin." Or as Peter Nicholls, writing for the Washington Post Book World remarked, "Sagan is certainly a better scientist than a novelist. As a novel the book is slow; as a portrait of the way scientists think, it is quite interesting, in what it gives away as well as in what it consciously tells us." Gregory Benford in the New York Times Book Review noted, "The authorial voice has clearly done its homework, piling on detail. One gets the feel of a senior writing a term paper with the teacher looking over his shoulder; the sentences smother momentum, only occasionally … sparkling with the Sagan wit." He concluded, "Contact fulfills no high literary promise, but it does deal with issues seldom discussed, and worth pondering."

Sagan devoted much of his time to writing and lecturing about the long-term effects of nuclear warfare, including coauthoring (with Richard Turco) A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race. The scientist's vision of the total devastation and widespread death brought on by radiation poisoning made him a leading spokesman in the nuclear disarmament movement. Representing this cause, Sagan appeared in a panel debate with such figures as William F. Buckley, Jr., Elie Wiesel, and Henry Kissinger, following a broadcast of the highly publicized television film The Day After, which dramatized the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Lawrence, Kansas.

Sagan next ventured into scientific study focusing on human origins with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are. Coauthored with his wife, Ann Druyan, the book is a Darwinian search for evidence of human origins in the behavior and physiology of other life forms, especially monkeys and apes. The book begins with a focus on the beginnings of the solar system and resulting DNA, with later chapters devoted to explaining human origins based on behavioral and anatomical similarities between humans and other creatures. According to several reviewers, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors showcases Sagan's ability to relate complex scientific theories to the layman. Marvin Harris in the Washington Post Book World found the work to be "a fine [example] of readable, exciting and provocative big sky popular science," while a Kirkus Reviews contributor called it "crack science-writing for the masses."

Sagan's 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, returned to the subject of the universe. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan takes his easy-to-understand concepts of the universe one step further, attempting to foretell the future of humans in space in the event of the destruction of Earth and the rest of the solar system. He reviews the history of space flight, including the discoveries of the Voyager spacecraft, and looks forward to humans "terraforming" other worlds to make them livable in order to preserve the species. The title itself refers to the image of the earth from the Voyager's perspective in space, supposedly Sagan's idea, which reduces earthly, human issues to mere dust.

Critics were fairly consistent in their praise of this work. Sagan continued to be commended for his ability to "impart a healthy dose of science (to readers), making it palatable to the lay reader by using jargon-free English buoyed by emotion and humor," as Leon Jaroff noted in Time. This seems to be the expectation of readers of his work, commented Charles Sheffield in the Washington Post Book World, "We assume that Sagan will be lucid and erudite, with an easy grasp of science, philosophy and history. This book does not disappoint us."

A year before his death, Sagan issued The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. The 1995 publication picked up where Pale Blue Dot left off in working to debunk not just religious beliefs but New Age philosophies, UFO sightings, and other "irrational beliefs." Sagan "rallies the forces of reason and scientific literacy," commented a Kirkus Reviews contributor, against an onslaught of superstition and religious fundamentalism. As a leading astronomer and "true" believer in life beyond Earth, he especially takes issue with UFO sightings, but he also covers a wide spectrum of beliefs based in scientific ignorance. Sagan even includes checklists for evaluating scientific evidence.

Reviewers continued to appreciate Sagan's passion tinged with humor for his subject. Martin Gardner, writing for the Washington Post Book World, commented on Sagan's wit in relaying various scientific swindles and hoaxes. He added, however, that "such ersatz wonders … pale beside those of authentic science—wonders that glow throughout all of Sagan's marvelous, wonder-saturated books." While Lynn Phillips took issue with Sagan's purely scientific view of human issues, commenting in the Nation that he "begins to resemble the popular caricature of the scientist as a half-man: all brain and no heart," Phillips found him to "make his case for rational thinking attractive and imperative."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Cohen, Daniel, Carl Sagan: Superstar Scientist, Dodd, Mead (New York, NY), 1987.

Contemporary Issues Criticism, Volume 2, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 30, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Ginenthal, Charles, Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky, Ivy Press Books (Forest Hills, NY), 1990, New Falcon Publications (Tempe, AZ), 1995.

Swift, David W., SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk about Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, University of Arizona Press (Tuscon, AZ), 1990.

Terzian, Yervant, and Elizabeth Bilson, Carl Sagan's Universe, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

PERIODICALS

America, February 7, 1981, William J. O'Malley, "Carl Sagan's Gospel of Scientism," pp. 95-98.

Atlantic Monthly, August, 1977, Robert Manning, review of The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence.

Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 1980, Robert C. Cowen, review of Cosmos, p. 17.

Commentary, August, 1977, R.J. Herrnstein, review of The Dragons of Eden; May, 1981.

Detroit News, May 27, 1977.

Humanist, July-August, 1981, William J. Harnack, "Carl Sagan: Cosmic Evolution vs. the Creationist Myth," pp. 5-11; March-April, 1993, Edd Doerr, review of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, p. 39.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 22, 1992, p. 11.

Nation, May 20, 1996, Lynn Phillips, review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, pp. 25-28.

National Review, August 3, 1979, Maureen Bodo, review of Broca's Brain; April 22, 1996, Phillip E. Johnson, review of The Demon-Haunted World, p. 57.

New Statesman, April 4, 1980, Peter Wilsher, review of Broca's Brain, pp. 515-516.

Newsweek, June 27, 1977; August 15, 1977; October 6, 1980, Harry F. Waters, review of Cosmos, p. 75; November 23, 1981, "Anti-nukes, U.S. Style," pp. 44-45.

New York, September 1, 1975, Stuart Bauer, review of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

New Yorker, June 21, 1976; June 28, 1976; August 2, 1977, John Updike, review of The Dragons of Eden.

New York Review of Books, June 9, 1977.

New York Times, May 17, 1977.

New York Times Book Review, May 29, 1977; June 10, 1979; July 19, 1979; January 25, 1981, James A. Michener, review of Cosmos, pp. 7-8; November 3, 1985, p. 12; January 6, 1991, Len Ackland, review of A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, p. 7; January 15, 1995, Rudy Abramson, review of Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, p. 12; April 7, 1996, James Gorman, review of The Demon-Haunted World, p. 10.

New York Times Magazine, May 28, 1978.

Omni, June, 1983, Ben Bova, "Planetary Blues," pp. 24-25.

People, December 15, 1980, Kristin McMurran, "His Cosmos a Huge Success, Carl Sagan Turns Back to Science and Saturn's Rings," pp. 42-45.

Psychology Today, January-February, 1996, "A Slayer of Demons" (interview with Sagan), pp. 30-36.

Rolling Stone, December 25, 1980, Jonathan Cott, review of Cosmos, pp. 43-49.

School Library Journal, December, 1992, David Schwam-Baird, review of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, p. 28.

Science, July 6, 1979, Richard Berendzen, review of Broca's Brain.

Science Digest, March, 1982, Isaac Asimov, review of Intelligent Life in the Universe, p. 36.

Scientific American, May, 1995, Philip Morrison, review of Pale Blue Dot, p. 106; June, 1996, Joe Nickell, review of The Demon-Haunted World, p. 106.

Time, January 24, 1974; September 29, 1980, John S. DeMott, review of Cosmos, p. 83; October 20, 1980, Frederic Golden, "The Cosmic Explainer" (profile of Sagan), pp. 62-67; December 14, 1981, "Big Bank Bust," p. 68; January 9, 1995, Leon Jaroff, review of Pale Blue Dot, p. 71, 73; March 27, 1995, "Ailing, Carl Sagan," p. 25.

Voice Literary Supplement, November, 1985, Eliot Fremont-Smith, review of Contact.

Wall Street Journal, April 26, 1996, Jim Holt, review of The Demon-Haunted World, section A, pp. 10, 13.

Washington Post Book World, May 27, 1977; November 17, 1980, Eliot Marshall, review of Cosmos; October 13, 1985, Peter Nicholls, review of Contact, p. 6; September 27, 1992; December 11, 1994, Charles Sheffield, review of Pale Blue Dot; March 17, 1996, Martin Gardner, review of The Demon-Haunted World, pp. 1, 10.