Cosmos by Carl Sagan (2013-12-10)

You can open this book to any page and you are immediately drawn into the beauty and mystery of the universe. History is explained in it’s context and relationship to science. Easy to understand and beautifully written, even though science has made fact of what was conjecture when this book was written.

The Masterpiece written by the Master of sharing the cosmos with us. We miss you Carl.

Sagan really shows how the big picture in reality is made up by all the science fields unified. He was an athiest,ii believe in god. Great read

I bought this for my granddaughter as a birthday gift. She loves it

Such a wonderful book. Still relevant today

In Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Sagan integrates different perspectives to broaden understandings and explore enigmas of the ever-changing yet constant world around us. Its distant, cold enormity and intimate, warmer closeness. He combines a variety of disciplines, majorly science, literature, philosophy, and history to analyze what shapes the Cosmos and our relationship to and perception of it. Little by little, Sagan’s hallmark style also begins to emerge: he isn’t politically correct and doesn’t try to be. He wants to start a discussion and holds remarkably steadfast to his beliefs. Cosmos is his model of the universe and within it he makes the rules and begins by staying intellectually humble and encouraging a dialogue between different subjects, which complement and even contradict each other. Sagan also realistically acknowledges our abilities and limitations, and engages us in an accessible discussion of ideas, while trusting us as being capable, which reveals his uplifting confidence in humankind’s goodness, beauty, and aptitude. Philosophically, he’s endorsing humanism, our potential and ability to be better as people and stewards of the Cosmos. All throughout, Sagan continues to foster a profound openness toward ideas, their ability to shift and change and influence each other, which is why a multidisciplinary approach is fitting. The structure is paralleling the content and emphasizing the complexities of the world and vastness of its scope. Sagan’s words also continually have the special ability to get inside a variety of different minds and paint a fuller picture of who we are and how we began and developed. Within all these disciplines, we find faith in humanity, the beauty of nature, voyaging into and exploring the unknown, our infinite capacity for knowledge, space and time, and the quality of either being infinite or finite, our comparatively ephemeral mortality in the face of the more eternal, boundless universe, and each being forever better for being explained in the context of each other because of the multitudes and revelations each contain.

The print too small. Don't like and wants to return.

Character development is usually rushed or nonexistent. The world-building is incredible though!