Carl Sagan: A Life

This biography differs from many of the other sycophantic works about celebrity lives in that it treats its subject as its subject treated the world: objectively. Those who have ears to hear, they will hear and agree. Sagan was larger than life. A brilliant man with a passion for his subject he was none-the-less subject to human feelings and human failings. This book portrays the human side of Carl Sagan from his sudden, relationship damaging mood swings, to his desire to achieve the greatest good. It takes the myth of Carl Sagan and exposes the very real man underneath it all. Sagan the scientist allowed his passions to distort his views at times but what great scientist hasn't had moments of irrational behavior? Sagan the humanitarian often demanded that things be done to relieve human suffering and end nuclear proliferation. He could be stubborn to the point of being annoying when it came to exposing frauds in science and the inhuman monsters (Edward Teller) whom he resented. The book portrays a very human Sagan. A product of his era, he smoked pot, desired peace, devoted himself to his scientific calling, and became a legend. If you can stand to have the curtain drawn and the wizard exposed, this is the book for you. If you like fantasy over reality, move on.

After reading 'Carl Sagan - A Life', you get an understanding of the private person behind the very public face. Shunned by the scientific world (his failed admission into the American Academy of Science in 1991 the greatest insult), two failed marriages and strained working relationships, paint Sagan as a thinker and a dreamer unable to fully take control of the reality around him. The biography is detailed in its descriptions of Sagan from childhood through to his untimely death in 1996. Personal descriptions from friends and family highlight their frustration rather than resentment towards him. His enthusastic support of extraterestrial life caused enormous conflict with colleagues and supervising professors, however his ability to communicate science to the average person won praise from the press and community at large. It's certainly obvious that without Carl Sagan the world of Astronomy and Space Exploration would be a lot poorer and without the level of public support it enjoys.

As a younger planetary scientist, I was greatly edified by this account of Carl's life. Its weaving of human life stories with scientific milestones was a great corrective to the distorted picture of intellectual progress one gets from just reading peer-reviewed literature and hearing talks at conferences! To wit, I remember Sagan's late close colleague, Jim Pollack, from his sagacious presence at meetings that I attended as a grad student. It took Davidson's account, however, for me to know the human side of this man! Sagan's humanity also emerges here, via recorded memories of wives, kids, and colleagues. Together, these accounts paint a portrait that is more appealing for being less sycophantic. I was energized by this book to live life with greater zeal, as a scientist *and* as a person!

To TV viewers, astronomer Carl Sagan was the guy who raised the IQ of The Tonight Show; to colleagues, he was a brilliant scientist or a shameless attention-grabber (or both); to those close to him, he was a passionate and complicated man; and to a generation of kids, he was an inspiration. In his deftly crafted and exhaustively researched biography, science writer Keay Davidson brings to life all facets of Sagan's complex and sometimes contradictory personality. Although the book has its share of bombshells (its revelation of Sagan's marijuana use has been front-page news), it's in no way sensational. Rather, its pleasures lie in the lyricism of Davidson's prose, as it takes Sagan from his problematic childhood to a deathbed farewell to his beloved wife that will leave the crustiest science buffs weeping. The book is tough, fair, intensely observant, and a lightning read. It's also a fascinating look at life on the cusp between academia and the limelight - required reading for anyone who ever wondered how scientists work, think, squabble, and live.

It's important to put the emphasis on my one-line summary on "human". The purpose of a biography is not to blindly adulate the topic, as the previous one-star review seems to suggest. Davidson has done an exhaustive job of researching and recounting the life of a man who inspired an entire generation of kids, myself included, and yet was painfully human in typical, almost predictable, ways.The portrait that Davidson paints with this hefty tome (over 400 pages of text, and another 100 pages of footnotes, bibliography, and index) respectfully depicts the penultimate showman-scientist of the 20th century. It's difficult to be a good scientist without being driven, and Sagan was nothing if not driven. But he also had a flamboyant imagination, one that would alternately drive and undermine his scientific contributions. It's awfully hard to be that famous and not get a big head, and by Davidson's account, his head grew awfully big.The previous reviewer faulted Davidson for getting as much input from Sagan's detractors as from his admirers. Of course he did. Davidson is a science writer, writing for a primarily scientifically-inclined audience; he is not writing for "Entertainment Tonight". I personally found the comments of first wife Lynn Margulis to be exceptionally even-keeled for an ex-wife (one wonders what invective would have been unearthed had Linda Salzman consented to an interview).Ultimately, Davidson has depicted Sagan as the human being that he was, warts and all, because that is indeed who Sagan was. To sugarcoat the man's life to appease his adulators would have ultimately done humanity a disservice. I came away from this book not only respecting Sagan as much as I ever have, but feeling privileged to have received a glimpse of the real human being behind the television persona.