Rating: 
Summary: Everyone should read this book.
Review: This book should be required reading to graduate from high school. I rank it among the best ten nonfiction books I've read in my 50+ years. The author touches on a variety of subjects including mans belief in demons, the inquisition, alien abduction and false memories, astrology, astronomy, science, psuedoscience, and popular beliefs. It's a good read and could be educational. It was for me.
Rating: 
Summary: This is Science?
Review: I find myself perplexed at Sagan's utter lack of consideration for the area thru which matter-science and spirit are interoperative. One example is his comment regarding abduction scenarios and why aliens never are "caught" by house alarms hooked to cameras and the like. I mean, I thought we were talking about alien phenomena, not the babysitter or neighborhood crook. A friend of mine once said of Sagan, "He may be smart but he's a dumb sumbitch."
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Summary: Excellent reflections on lack of scientific literacy
Review: Carl Sagan left behind a great legacy of skepticism, wonder, and curiosity. Although taking on some extremes when considering the gross need for research and science literacy funding, Sagan casually discusses bunk theories and superstitions that still exist today in our "modern world".This book makes you think about what really exists, and how much you THINK you know about the universe. Can you actually know the things around you, or do you think you understand them because someone else said so? If you believe you can answer that question definitively, take a moment to read this book. You're assured to do a double take on your beliefs.
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Summary: To the guy of New York bellow.
Review: I agree Sagan gets a bit mystical at some points, but face it, the guy was a visionary and if you have that lack of vission well. The same was said about the trip to the moon a while back. Anyway, I also agree that science can be our destruction but, if I give you a car, how do you drive it? With responasbility or not? the same goes with science. Don't blame science. Saying science will destroy humans is a variant of saying Humans will destroy humans. Blame humans in that case. Overal, the book's greate.
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Summary: Climbing aboard Sagan's lifeboat
Review: The Demon-Haunted World is a breath of fresh air in an atmosphere of growing irrationality. With arguments being put forth that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that anything one wants to believe is the truth as they percive it ( one reviewer actually criticized Sagan for taking exception to this fashionable attitude), Sagan's stuggle to rescue us from another Dark Age is admirable. I am in total agreement with him, being a science teacher myself, and am alarmed at the burgeoning pile of books published on life after death, ghosts, Area 51, UFO abductions, almost all of which are devoid of any proof or compelling evidence.Sorry, someone's word is not good enough,whether THEY beileve it or not! Science is not perfect-but it is the best tool we have for learning about the universe.I would encourage any intelligent person, who is not fearful of science and concerned about where we are heading to read this evocative book. When finished, it should be carried as a manual to help us when we are tempted to indulge in the constant array of nonsense our culture seems to spawn without any critical or skeptical thought.
Rating: 
Summary: What is the big deal?
Review: Hmm. Well, I suppose if you have had a smattering of science education, this book may seem like some sort of revelation but I thought it was hundreds of pages of stating the obvious and I was not impressed. Sagan is hailed as a great popularizer of science but I found his prose to be the sort of stuff one would expect from a high school creative writing student with mystical leanings. And face it, Sagan does have mystical leanings. I look out at the infinitude of space and see emptiness and meaninglessness for all eternity, making clear our condition: that we humans have to find happiness in ourselves and in each other and not outside of this planet. Sagan gets all misty eyed when he looks out and sounds like just another, more contemporary version of St. Francis gone mad and waxing poetic about nature. Sorry, Carl, there is nothing out there. And I do not just mean that there is no divine being out there to give our lives meaning. I mean that there is no meaning out there to give our lives meaning, no matter how long and hard you stare into that vast emptiness. The beauty you think you behold is actually cold and uncaring, and very ugly. Charles Darwin wrote over a century ago about the temptation to be overwhelmed sensually by the vastness of nature and then think that one has found meaning when it is nothing but an overload of the senses. Sagan also suffers from an overly optimistic faith in science, pinning all his hopes for a better future on it. I can imagine quite a number of reasonable scenarios where science is the agent of our destruction. To ignore these is to give science way too much credit, turning it into a substitute religion-for msytical souls like Sagan who need that sort of thing to keep going.
Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading in schools.
Review: The thought that I was left with as I mournfully turned the last page of this book was,...`This needs to be read by every schoolchild, everywhere'. We, the planet's humans, to survive, need to use the tools of thinking that Carl Sagan so clearly explains in this book. We're in big trouble if we don't heed his wise words.
Rating:
Summary: It changed how I think.
Review: This book opens your eyes to all of societies workings and how you are not meant to see the truth -- unless you want to find it. It changed how I think -- made me a better person. Thanks Carl.
Rating:
Summary: Simply great!!
Review: Definitely, people should stop believing every single thing they are told because many of those things may be just based on superstition and non-scientific facts.This book puts science above all those other aspects Sagan mentions in his book; science deserves to be placed there, above so much nonsense...
Rating:
Summary: Revealing, enjoyable, I wish my friends would read it
Review: I was overjoyed to read other reviews of this and see that there are realistic, intelligent people out there! If you blindly follow what you've been told, this book must be read. It might scare you. This is a stunning revelation that humans are not only small fish in an infinite pond, we are governed not by the position of the planets or whatever, but by natural laws and science. If you're afraid of yourself or of reality, skip it. If you want to avoid a 'pointless existence', READ IT!
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