'Tis better to light one candle....

Like "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden", this book is a collection of essays promoting fact over fantasy and reason over wishful thinking. Unlike some other skeptical authors, however, Dr. Sagan never forgets that the people whose beliefs he challenges are human beings -- and that he is, too. Along the way, he even relates bits of his background that give the reader a better understanding of his views and how he acquired them; it is an effective technique, and his style is every bit as charming as it is enlightening.

Besides the usual pseudoscience topics of UFOs, astrology and psychic phenomena, Dr. Sagan manages to address such tricky issues as creationism with admirable respect and restraint, coming from a champion of rationalism. Meanwhile, he meticulously employs logical analysis and draws on evidence from an impressive array of disciplines to build arguments as elegant as an Egyptian pyramid and every bit as solid.

For the scientifically learned reader, Dr. Sagan even "shows his work"; in other words, he provides the technical details, mathematics and chemical equations of those arguments that require them. But in deference to the majority of us, he puts most of this background matter in appendices and refrains from cluttering up the main text with more than the bare essentials of technical material, and even those are explained so clearly that a reasonably intelligent person with a high school reading level can keep up with no great effort.

Though it is the most politically charged of the books I have read by Dr. Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World" stands as an eloquent example of his lifelong efforts to understand the universe as fully and as honestly as possible and to help other people do the same. I highly recommend it to all teachers, students, parents, school board members, skeptics, clergy, scientists, politicians, journalists, producers, actors, and anyone else who may be curious about the universe and/or involved with describing or explaining it to others -- which should be just about everybody.