Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

I could read anything by Carl Sagan any time any day anywhere. This book talks about things such as global warming and mortality to ET and abortion. If your a fan of Sagan this is the book for you.

After reading his two best known works, "Cosmos" and "Contact" and receiving a suggestion to read this, I ordered Billions and Billions off the internet. After the first two chapters, I was confused. They had the same heart-felt, easy-to-read style Sagan is known for, but this book seemed more private and passionate. Unlike his other works, this seems to peer into his soul much more than other stuff I've read. The book is broken up into three parts. The first part is basically an introduction. It consists of a few chapters that educate you on such subjects as the importance of exponentials, the connection between hunting and football, and the true size and scope of the known universe. Like always, if the readers happens to already know a subject, it is still not painful to read through it. Sagan has a way with words that I can only describe as elegant. It is elementary enough to understand and yet intriguing enough to keep your interest. The second section I would consider the "Warning Section". Pretty much the entire thing is a giant speech on the horrible things we are doing to our planet. It touches on CFC's, CO2 poisoning, and the greenhouse effect. While 100 pages of this can take it's toll on your patience every once in a while, I never trully lost interest. Right when you can consider it boring it switchs subjects just enough to keep you reading. This is definetely the section when you realize this must be Sagan's last work. The true opinion and passion that comes out out in his writing is so unlike his other books that I forgot I was reading the author of "Cosmos". But right as I was about to get tired of hearing about the atmosphere and it's decline, the third section of the book came. I can't give this part a title because there are so many elements he touches on. Some of them being government tyranny, weapons of mass destruction, and abortion. The short essay on the latter subject was easily the most perfect example of Sagan's genius I have ever read. In a short writing he used facts, religion, philosophy, and opinion to give a perfectly unbiased view on a serious subject. But even through all his thoughts and theories, the last two chapters of the book stick in your head the most. "In the Valley of the Shadow" recounts his repeated problems with the illness that eventually took his life in 1996. All I can say is you have to read it. The term "heroic" is thrown around way too often in our society, but the word could not be better used than to describe Sagan's final years. And finally, the epilogue was written by his wife right after Carl's passing. Her look into the man beyond the scientist is something to be cherished. It is rare, nowadays, to find a person who is simultaneously intelligent, caring, and human at the same time. And even though it is a fairly known fact that Carl Sagan was in fact human, reading this final masterpiece makes one wonder whether he was truly part of our self-proclaime

This is an unbelievably moving and brilliant book. I wasn't prepared for what an environmentalist Sagan was or how much of his last book would be devoted to those causes, but it was a welcome surprise, especially since he comes to environmentalism from a place, quite simply, of understanding the human being's place in the cosmos. Sagan doesn't believe in man's place being at the top of creation -- on the contrary, he asserts that human beings are a transitional step in evolution, and if we don't destroy ourselves, there are still more strange and fascinating creatues left to evolve from us. What really makes the book a stunning series of insights, though, is the closing essay "In the Shadow of the Valley," Sagan's first-person account of his struggle with cancer. As he continues to fight bravely and, nonetheless, closes in on death, he shows an admirable ability to embrace the rational world he's known so well, rather than fleeing into superstition. His wife, Ann Druyan, made me weep with her inspiring and sad account of Carl's final hours, which serves as an afterword for the book. Truly an amazing achievement, to look in the face of death, without fear, believing that the only afterlife comes in the way people remember you. Magnificent and terrifying.

I found this book to be simply stunning. In fact it is really the book that set me, both physically and mentally in motion. It awakened in me a curiousity and zeal for knowledge that I hadn't remembered since my early childhood. So anyway I am now nearly finished with my undergraduate work and planning grad school. Ah the excitment of being a biologist. In billions and billions Sagan tackles many issues thoughtfully and as honestly as they can be. One reiviewer who thought the novel terrible and couldn't give it as a gift thought Sagan's ideas on the environment were cursory at best was, I think, completely off base. Sagan hits all the major points of our environmental problems and I think offers excellent solutions for them. Easily demolished? Only if you are a Rush Limbaugh fan who can easily dismiss obvious data. What I notice most about the reviews of this book that find it awful, or drivel, or plain bad is that it isn't that Sagan was short or a bad writer or any real and valid complaint, but rather that they simply disagree with his position on matters not of science. Sagan was an athiest but he was always respectful of religion. He felt his postion strong enough to stand in oposition to the popular one. I think the dismissiveness of the critics betrays their own fears that ideas like God, and religion aren't so strong, aren't so ready to be challenged. My quiestion is if they aren't, then what good are they? If we dismiss with out serious investigation then how strong are our ideas?

I read this shortly after finishing Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark." While I heartily recommend either volume, this one will, I think, appeal more to the mainstream audience. Dr. Sagan infuses this work not only with the critical thinking scientific method we know and admire him for, but also with a human touch which doesn't come across in some of his other writings. It is well worth your time to read what Sagan has to say here. During his lifetime, he was occasionally criticised in the scientific community for popularizing science, but he has done more to advance the cause of science than almost anyone else in the 20th century. In making science accessible, he allowed all of us to share his excitement and curiosity, and we are all made poorer by his loss.