Carl Sagan : a life / Keay Davidson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davidson, Keay.

Contributor:

Sagan, Carl, 1934-1996.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sagan, Carl, 1934-1996.

Sagan, Carl.

Astronomers--United States--Biography.

Astronomers.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xx, 540 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Wiley, [1999]

Summary:

Carl Sagan was one of the most celebrated scientists of his time--the leading visionary of the Space Age. He was also a highly controversial figure who inspired wildly opposed opinions. His enthusiasm and eloquence about the wonders of space, the marvels of the human brain, and the mysteries of life captured the imagination of millions. Yet one scientist was so enraged by Sagan's scientific pronouncements that he compared him to the Black Plague, and William F. Buckley Jr. likened him to circus huckster P. T. Barnum.

Sagan's life was both an intellectual feast and an emotional roller coaster. Whether he was searching for life on Mars or visiting Timothy Leary in prison, prophesying exciting scientific discoveries or getting arrested for protesting nuclear weapons, debating the existence of UFOs or advocating the creative benefits of smoking marijuana, Carl Sagan was a fascinating, charismatic, and complex man full of contradictions.

A passionate debunker of pseudoscience, Sagan was nevertheless so enthralled by the prospects of discovering life out in space that he championed science-fiction-like ideas about communication with alien superbeings, spaceflight to the stars, and "balloon animals" floating in the skies of Jupiter. A man with a dazzling social life, who hobnobbed with everyone from Nobel laureates to the Dalai Lama, and celebrities like Johnny Carson, Jodie Foster, and Paul Newman, he was also intensely private, and even many of his closest friends felt they knew little about the real man inside.

The son of Jewish immigrants living in middle-class Brooklyn--a father who had fled Czarist Russia and a vivacious but acid-tongued mother--he became a staunch religious skeptic. Though he was doted on by his domineering mother and had a close relationship with his father, he largely neglected his first two sons, and while he avidly espoused feminist views, his sexism ruined his first marriage. An illicit affair tore apart his second. Yet in his third marriage, he found lasting love, and he learned to be a more engaged and giving father.

In this insightful and evenhanded biography, acclaimed science journalist Keay Davidson reveals for the first time the man behind the famous image--the storm of contradictions and passions that animated this enigmatic and entrancing man who remained, at heart, the five-year-old Brooklyn boy who looked up at the stars and asked: What are they? Davidson draws on an unprecedented wealth of interviews with Sagan's family members, friends, colleagues, admirers, and detractors, as well as from a vast archive of unpublished writings and intimate personal papers. The result is one of the most thought-provoking scientific biographies of our time--a probing and critical yet affectionate portrait of the man who, more than any other, epitomized the boldest dreams of the Space Age.

Contents:

1 Brooklyn 1

2 Chicago 35

3 The Dungeon 53

4 High Ground 83

5 California 109

6 Harvard 136

7 Mars and Manna 167

8 Mr. X 208

9 Gods Like Men 236

10 The Shadow Line 260

11 The Dragons of Eden 283

12 Annie 300

13 Cosmos 318

14 Contact 341

15 The Value of L 354

16 Look Back, Look Back 381

17 Hollywood 399

18 The Night Freight 412.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 501-519) and index.

ISBN:

0471252867

OCLC:

41580617