Summary
Title: Conversations with Carl Sagan
Author: edited by Tom Head
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1578067367
Pro:
• Interviews would be difficult to get individually
Con:
• None
Description:
• Collection of interviews Carl Sagan gave through his life
• Wide variety of topics are covered
Book Review
It’s difficult not to think about how much more Carl Sagan might have accomplished if he had lived longer, and then to become a bit depressed over the fact that he died at such a relatively young age. That, however, is not the sort of legacy he would have wanted to leave behind. That he is gone is a fact which no one can do anything about, so instead of looking back sadly on his death, we should instead look back with admiration at all he accomplished in life.
By focusing on his life we can focus on the positive, perhaps furthering his objectives of encouraging science, skepticism, critical thinking, and of course a love of a life dedicated to better understanding our world. All of this, I believe, is accomplished in the recent book edited by Tom Head: Conversations with Carl Sagan. This isn’t a biography or a review of Sagan’s philosophy; it is instead a collection of previously published interviews spread through several decades of diverse publications, so it’s unlikely that anyone would be able to read them all in any other way.
Because this is a collection of interviews, Carl Sagan is allowed to speak for himself — and no one is more qualified to speak about Sagan’s work, dreams, and goals than Sagan. Head doesn’t insert lots of little introductions to each piece, thus getting in between the reader and the material; at the same time, though, Head’s presence is made manifest in his choice of which interviews to include. His general introduction to the book focuses on Sagan’s love, passion, and wonder in the face of the universe, and all of this is brought vividly forth in the interviews themselves.
Conversations with Carl Sagan, edited by Tom Head
Carl Sagan was a scientist, but more than that he was an advocate: an advocate for science education, for using science rather than superstition to learn about the universe, for using reason and skepticism rather than dogma or ideology to solve human social problems, for encouraging curiosity, and of course for making the most out of our lives even in the face of the realization that we are eking out those lives on a tiny rock in the midst of a hostile, indifferent universe. It was this advocacy which made him popular with journalists looking for a scientist to interview because Sagan wasn’t afraid to take a position and defend it — calmly, rationally, but also passionately.
This is the first collected edition of Carl Sagan interviews, but hopefully it won’t be the last. There were certainly a lot of possible choices that Tom Head had to go through, so there’s plenty of material for more books in the future. This book will probably be of the most interest to people already interested in Carl Sagan and science in America; I don’t imagine that very many casual readers will want to bother picking it up. For those already interested in the subject, however, it should be well worth getting a copy.
