Started: Nov. 23
Finished: Dec. 4
Notes: I'm not much of a science reader, though for some time I've been thinking it would be worth my while to read this most famous of science books, perhaps only surpassed by Darwin for popularity among the general reading public, and possibly not even that. I fully expect some of the information here to be dated, as this book is nearing 40 years of age, but with a foreward by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, my guess would be there might be some updating, if not within the actual text at least within the foreward and perhaps other notes.
Mini review: I'm glad I read this one, and wished I had decades ago. I needn't have worried about the science being out of date, for this isn't that kind of book for the most part but is almost more of a philosophy book, giving the general state of scientific thought towards the latter part of the 20th Century, much of which still stands up today. What few things were outdated are rare, though I'm no expert so there might have been more that I missed. This strikes me as a very '80s book, steeped in the political and scientific thought of that time, and in a way that was refreshing without all the modern hoopla that goes along with so much of our current ways of thinking and communicating. I also liked the fact that Sagan wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything here, but was more or less merely stating "this is how things are."
An excellent work. I really enjoyed it
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