Cosmos

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Summary: Book of cosmic proportions!
Review: COSMOS was simply the finest science book I've ever read. A book any reader, regardless of his background, can enjoy and appreciate. I'd recommend this to anybody who can read!

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Summary: Cosmos -- a Pleasure
Review: I read Cosmos at age 48, after having studied mathmatics, physics, and astronomy for much of my early life. Although loving the strict rigor of mathematical proofs and scientific reasoning immensely, I believe that there is something important to be said about the poetic, almost terrifying beauty inherent in the most significant areas and principles in these related field. I believe that Carl Sagan has sought (and accomplished) to go beyond the purely technical (which has an admittedly limited readership), and invited the uninitiate to venture into the realms of the heavens as well, and there is alot to be said about this approach too. For one thing, the more enlightened the general public, the more chance for mutual survival. Furthermore, science does not function solely in an ivory tower; it coexists in a wider world with many people who could be made to appreciate the genuine wonders. It is to the author's credit that he realizes this, which many other "pure" scientists of the same ilk (Sagan certainly knew his "hard science" too) would be well to observe. Many scientists of my own acquaintance suffer from a debilitating technical myopia. So here's to a major achievement and major book. Detractors should search their souls and motivations carefully. The world would be a far more enlightened and better place if only more people read it today.

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Summary: El mejor libro de introducción a la Astronomía
Review: Leo Cosmos desde hace 11 años y siempre encuentro cosas interesantes y actuales. Cambió la forma en que percibía el Universo. Carl Sagan lo escribió con una secuencia muy bien estructurada principalmente para los principiantes en el mundo de la ciencia. Es un excelente regalo para todas las edades. Read it!!!

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Summary: Some of the reviews are a bit over the top
Review: But this is a good and important book. I read it at 13 and it did have a profound effect both philosophically and intellectually. Given its virtues are dealt with in other reviews I will concentrate on its less good points.

First it is rather out of date. Not really the fault of the book but anything on science will be obselete almost as quickly as your PC.

Second, I found it was rather metaphysical at times. I feel a book on science should avoid this like the plague. The first eight words are very famous and utterly unscientific.

Third, you'll come away thinking you know about physics and cosmology whereas in fact you don't. The best writer on real gritty physics is Dr Feynman (Six Easy Pieces and Not So Easy Pieces). I expect my spelling has already revealed I majored in physics!

Lastly, as someone mentioned, Sagan is not a great scientest but rather a great communicator. This is no bad thing, of course. However, many scientists are very suspicious of populists who go over their heads to the general public with theories that are not yet scientific orthodoxy. Hawking and Dawkins are also prime offenders in this category. It might partly be envy of their fame and fortune but the point is still valid.

That said, if this book gets us more people doing physics then great.

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Summary: Cosmos opened me the world of reading.
Review: Cosmos has astronomy, history, biographies... ...everything so well explained. The book is far better than the series, you let your imagination fly. This book made me read 10 times more than I did before it, it is something you would like to keep for your sons when they grow up.

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Summary: Think beyond...think COSMOS !
Review: My brother (elder to me) was an ardent follower of the television series. Later some time I gifted this book to him and I can't describe how happy he was. Well, I don't know how many times he must have read it, but he used to read out paragraphs to me, share ideas in that book to me, tell ME to read out paragraphs for him.

Finally, out of curiosity I read this book...and even today, I quote sentences from this book.

I was 12 then but the book became my possesion, my priced collection, a book I continue to gift.

One must read this book not to complete it but to admire it...admire COSMOS.

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Summary: A Great Gift for a Child
Review: My uncle gave me this book when I was about 10 years old and it was a seed that eventually led to a career in science (I am now 30). I read little bits of it each night before bed and looked at all the pictures. It was sort of like an encylopedia, you could just pick any chapter in the book and begin reading. I was most capivated by the pictures and information about the Mars and Venus missions, as well as the information about experiments involving "primordial soup" (the amino acids that are the precursors to life). Also, it was very mind expanding for me at that age to gain the perspective of the human race being such a tiny and insignificant part of the huge universe and to learn how scientists tried to communicate our essence in a universal tongue so they could place it on a phonograph record on the side of Voyager. (How do you start from scratch, build up a basic symbolic language, and use it to describe the structure of our DNA for an alien being? What features of our being and culture are important to include?) That was grown up science and I felt precocious being exposed to this at that age.

I suggest you get the hardcover edition that has the glossy pictures that draw kids in and can stand up to abuse.

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Summary: The Best book I ever read in my life
Review: Carl Sagan's Cosmos is compelling for anyone who reads it. It's driving me wild with facts that many in real life care little to understand.I've read 3 times and still I can't find it boring. Sagan's "Cosmos" and Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of time" are the modern day bible that everyone should refer to.

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Summary: Carl Sagan Writes This More Like An Essay
Review: Carl Sagan, I believe wrote this book more out to be an essay of what he believes. That sometimes can be a little over-the-top. Usually a long essay will not put out the message fully. The ending of this book didn't truly fulfill what I wanted to read. The book does have some good points about the cosmos but it perhaps put too much emphasis where the book should not have went by doing too much info on the scientists of the cosmo. The truth is, this science book didn't fulfill what I expected of it. And thats all I have to say about this book.

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Summary: The finest introductory astronomy book ever written
Review: Why don't schools teach from this book?? (Probably because a new edition with the latest pictures from Hubble isn't cranked out every 6 months requiring students to go buy a copy!)

In "Cosmos," Sagan takes you by the hand on a journey through the universe, and the history of our own attempts to try and undertand our place in it. More than any other science book, by the time you get to the chapters about our own fledgling explorations of the outer solar system, you realize how much we stand on the shoulders of giants from our own past. Eratosthenes, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Goddard - all great men, but also with very human qualities that drove them to explore what was "out there." It's easy to see (and share) Sagan's frustruation with the apathay and acceptance of pseudoscience in modern society. We've come so far, but there is still a long way to go...

BTW, try and find the hardbound edition of "Cosmos." Otherwise you are shorting yourself about 95% of the illustrations.