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  • Full bibliographic data for Cosmos

    Title
    Cosmos
    Subtitle
    The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation
    Authors and contributors
    By (author) Carl Sagan
    Physical properties
    Format: Paperback
    Number of pages: 416
    Width: 128 mm
    Height: 197 mm
    Thickness: 27 mm
    Weight: 330 g
    Audience
    General/trade
    Language
    English
    ISBN
    ISBN 13: 9780349107035
    ISBN 10: 0349107033
    Classifications
    BISAC category code: SCI004000
    Dewey: 509
    Nielsen BookScan Product Class: T8.0
    BISAC category code: SCI015000
    Publisher
    Little, Brown Book Group
    Imprint name
    Abacus
    Publication date
    11 August 1983
    Publication City/Country
    London/GB
    Review quote
    ** 'Enticing, imaginative, readable, iridescent The New York TIMES
    Biographical note
    Sagan was Dir. of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies & David Duncan Prof. of Astronomy & Space Sciences at Cornell University.He played a leading role in the Mariner, Viking & Voyage expeditions to the planets & was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for literature. He died in 1996.
    Review text
    Thirteen profusely illustrated chapters to match 13 television programs this fall featuring prolific, peripatetic Carl Sagan as author/host. The cosmos is, as he says, everything there is, or was, or will be. For Sagan it is romance, drama, adventure, discovery - and a peg to allow him to write about favorite themes: the origins of life here, and possibly There, evolution, intelligence, cosmology, communication. Some of the chapters focus on familiar planetscapes; hostile Venus, maybe-microbial Mars. Others set the grand scene - the 15-billion-year-old universe, the takeoff of life forms on Earth with the first multicellular creatures. In many ways this is vintage Sagan, asking questions with schoolboy curiosity, conveying facts with irrepressible zest, sprinkling literary quotes and illusions along the way, and stirring all with bits of gossip, anecdotes, and tales of visionaries and fools. Velikovsky comes in for his usual raps. We hear about Kepler's sad marriage and Newton's lifelong virginity. In the end we are smitten with Sagan's zeal to find out who is out there; to set up the radio telescopes and listen; to hope that our feeble communications are overheard, and that some day we get there or that supergalactic explorers arrive. Sagan at his best. (Kirkus Reviews)
    Main description
    New edition.
    Promotional headline
    * The story of cosmic evolution, science and civilisation