Customer Reviews

Carl Sagan: A Life

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Carl Sagan : A Life by Keay Davidson; (see also my review at Carl Sagan : A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone - this review considers both books)

Carl Sagan is easily the second most famous scientist of the 20th century. If you came of age in the period 1970-1990, you were influenced by Sagan - period. Whatever you may think of him as a scientist, you must admit that nobody did more to popularize science in the public eye during this period. The two most obvious examples are his Cosmos television series and his numerous appearances with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.

Poundstone's book reflects Ann Druyan's influence much more than Davidson's. The result is a much more flattering account of Sagan's life, potentially minimizing some of the warts. Davidson, if anything, spends too much effort trying to psychohistorically analyze Sagan's two failed marriages and his fractured relationship with oldest son Dorion.

Davidson also focuses much more attention on Sagan's books, attempting to plot the development of his career as a scientist and maturity as a writer based on each book's unique character. Here again, he attempts to delve below the surface into the hidden motives and influences. For instance, while both Poundstone and Davidson detail Sagan's marijuana use, Davidson goes further and suggests that the Pulitzer-winning Dragon's of Eden was largely a marijuana- induced work.

William Poundstone Focuses more on his scientific achievements, with emphasis on the many conferences he chaired regarding SETI, exobiology, and his work on the Voyager and Mariner probes to Mars and the gas giants. Some of the reviews of the latter actually read like a popular scientific account of these missions, written around Sagan's contribution and perspective.

A very rough generalization would be that Davidson looks more closely at Sagan's personal life while Poundstone looks more closely at his scientific achievemnts, though both books do cover the whole picture. Poundstone's book left me with more of a positive regard for Sagan though, and struck me as the better book of the two. Poundstone's account strikes me as first and foremost a work of scientific biography, with more detail of Sagan's scientific achievements.

Imagine if you will - the biographer of Leonardo da Vinci portraying him, not as an artist, not as innovator - but as a failed helicopter designer. What a travesty!

That's the feeling I got reading Keay Davidson's biography of Carl Sagan. For the most part the book highlights Sagan's numerous failures in his scientific career. And contains numerous disparaging words on Sagan's "undeserved" fame - the most stinging being Edwards Teller's parting remark of Sagan, "What did he do? What did he discover?" (pg 380)

Clearly, Davidson has missed the mark here - not on facts but on focus. Sagan's work was never in the same league with that of - say - Feynman, Bohr or Einstein. We know this. We accept this. And he can hardly be blamed for such a shortcoming since astrophysics has hardly been at the frontiers of science - as, say particle physics or mathematical physics. (Well, perhaps not since the times of Kepler, Galileo and Newton.)

Davidson admits to being influenced by Sagan, (more than just once) and he comes across as a fan still pretty much in awe of his idol. I don't really blame him for that. In fact, if Davidson had paid more attention to this line of thought - Sagan's influence - rather than Sagan's science, the book may have come closer to capturing the spirit of awe and wonder that Sagan seemed to wield almost effortlessly, especially to millions of television viewers across the globe.

Sagan was more than a scientist. He was more than a teacher. Sagan was - to me and millions of people like me around the globe - a Svengali of science. The first - but hopefully not the last. I can say with absolute certainty that I may never have given a career in physics a second thought, had I not, as child, been dazzled by the television series Cosmos.

To Teller's question, I have this to say: Sagan discovered within us the ability to see ourselves as residents of an infinite universe. He made "wonder" a legitimate part of the scientific experience.

I just wish Davidson had said something like that in his biography - instead of letting Teller have the last word: "You waste your time writing about a nobody."

Don't waste your time with this book - especially if you grew up in awe of Sagan's art.

It is a regrettable fact of human nature that success creates enemies, no matter how the success was achieved. Jealousy being what it is, there will always be those who will dislike a successful person simply for what they have accomplished. Carl Sagan was a showman, no question about it. He had the stage presence of an accomplished actor, which in many ways he was. At the same time, he was also a good scientist, again no question about it. He was able to converse in many different fields, making significant contributions in planetary science and posing some questions that have led others to many different results. Finally, he was a first class author, winning awards for his writing. These characteristics led to a great deal of bad feelings towards him, some of which he could have blunted and a little of which appears in this book.
I generally found the book to be a good, interesting description of the life of Carl Sagan, but there was one point that I found particularly annoying. There is no doubt that Sagan was not much of a family man in his early years, almost completely refusing to do any of the household or child rearing chores. What I found trying was the authors continuing amateur psychoanalysis, attributing this to a problem concerning his domineering mother. The author completely ignores the American society of the late fifties and early sixties, where it was the husbands job to pursue a career and the wife was to take care of house and family and unconditionally support his career path. While Sagan may have been more distant than most fathers, his fundamental approach was identical to the overwhelming majority of men. To attribute this to the relationship with his mother is absurd.
Sagan also changed over the years to become more of a father and worker about the house. In this sense, he also mirrors the changes that were moving through society. As it became more socially acceptable for women to pursue careers, there was a corresponding movement for men to do the basic tasks like change diapers. In this way, he was much more mainstream than the author gives him credit for.
Was Sagan a great scientist? Probably not, although he was clearly a very good one. His everlasting contribution will be the awareness and interest he generated among the public. So many of those who were critical of him owed their very jobs and careers to the public funding that probably would not have been available if it had not been for him. His ability to capture and control the stage at a time when the public showed little interest in space exploration made him a media star, one of only two scientists to reach celebrity status. The other was of course Einstein, but there simply was not the competition for celebrity status in Einsteins time as there was in Sagans. A great deal of time is also spent describing the jealousies that were generated due to Sagans success. It was interesting at first, but after some time it began to drag. My reason for reading the book was to learn about his ideas and accomplishments, not learn about the fellow scientists who were unhappy with his style and approach. The book would have been much better with less description of these petty conflicts.
Carl Sagan changed the world in many ways, almost all of which were positive. He helped preserve funding for the space program at a time when only governments can pay for it. He was instrumental in creating a private organization for space research and through his popular books, made a whole generation think about things in a different way. No one really has any idea what the final verdict will be concerning exobiology, a field he helped found. But if a signal is ever discovered from another world, he will go down in history as one of the greatest visionaries of science. We will not know the scientific consequences of his life for another ten years or so. In this book, you learn about his life, both the personal and professional. I would have preferred less about the personal, especially when the author attempts to interpret the reasons for it, and why he was married three times. Sagan was a genius, and it is always trecherous to explain the actions of someone with a mind of that caliber.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, this book is very well written and very interesting. It kept my interest from start to finish and was hard to put down. The detailed anecdotes and thoughts of Sagan's friends, colleagues and family members make for very interesting reading. I also came away with an enhanced respect for Sagan as a scientist. On the other hand, I think Davidson goes to far injecting his personal anti-science opinions and in tearing down Sagan's books. For instance, Davidson goes on a tirade trashing "Dragons of Eden", which was a magnificent achievement. I think there was some jealousy of Sagan among scientific circles, since it was Sagan who got all the attention. Maybe Davidson is a little jealous of Sagan's mega-success too. Despite this, I do feel the book is worth reading.

Four and five stars, I mean; and perhaps its because this book makes us less sure of the real Carl Sagan (compared to Poundstone's treatment). This is a year for biography and memoirs and I've been reading more than my share. What is interesting here is that we see that supposed other side of Sagan. In Goodall's Reason for Hope we see the other side of her pure science("Hope"); in Zoland's Nabokov's Blues we see the other side of Nabokov never appreciated before. Perhaps Davidson's best contribution, therefore, is the treading of this new ground...the more complex Carl Sagan, the "harder to read", harder to encapsulate. It will be tremendously interesting to see how later history judges Sagan and these early biographies will certainly figure in that telling. Davidson is to be congratulated for taking the risk to do something different with his data. This is a book worth reading-- and comparing not only to the "other" Sagan by Poundstone, but the other glimpses of scientific personalities the year has given us-- Glenn, Goodall, Nabokov, etc. Wade into it!

While the book is loaded with facts and figures, proof that the author had done a great deal of impressive research, this research then passes through the author's own "filter", one which that carries a very specific agenda. From the very first pages, it is clear that the author is trying to tarnish Sagan's image as much as possible, while pretending to be objective.

The book was lavishingly generous with negative quotations about Sagan. Most of the interviewed were those who had something toxic to say, while the other side, such as the many students who loved Sagan their teacher, were ignored, or given lip-service in the briefest manner, to keep the space for those others who bore grudges, and to create the impression that the latter were the majority. This selective process is followed throughout the entire book, giving maximum space to the voices of jealous colleagues and vexed ex-wives. The author seemed to be the spokesman of everyone who was deeply jealous of Sagan's popularity, forgetting that Sagan's works, not just on TV ( for which, many colleagues apparently never forgave him ), but also his brilliant writings, speak for themselves.

To add insult to injury, the author never stops to bestow his own psychoanalytical explanations on Sagan's acts, pretending to know hidden motives so well as if he were living inside Sagan's very own mind. No event escapes the attempt of the author to provide his very own interpretation of the feelings or thoughts "underlying it", all of which is not based on any quotations or confessions of Sagan to anybody, but on the author's own conjectures, constantly offered as though they were facts.

The only messages that Davidson succeeded in getting through to me as a reader are these:

1- He, the author, by constantly putting his voice first, assuming the role of self-appointed shrink, and presenting his opinions as if they were facts, was in violation of the very basics of objectivity required to write a biography (whether that was motivated by a calculated effort to tarnish Sagan's image at the cost of some basic ethics, or whether he simply couldn't bring his own inflated ego out of the way in anything he does as a general rule, is something I, unlike him, would not profess to know).

2- The author seems to have been trying hard to do a big favor to someone else embittered by Sagan's success. It is so obvious that there is something personal at stake, and the reader feels taken for a ride amidst what seems like a blatant attempt to "settle scores" at the expense of the deceased Sagan, and at the expense of the readers themselves.

I advise readers to check another biography, or to read Sagan's own works..Nothing is as "intellectually abusive" as a pretense of being objective that hides behind it bias and hidden agendas..any reader of average insight would see through. Davidson is as objective towards his subject as is the parasite towards the life it is feeding upon.

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.

The book starts out reasonably well enough, with Davidson drawing you into the overview of the life of Carl Sagan's parents. But as the book progresses, you begin to see another side to the story of Sagan's life that you weren't expecting. Davidson doesn't hesitate to make broad generalizations and interpretations of his interviews with people in Sagan's life, even making borderline psychoanalytical conclusions to explain his behavior when Davidson is clearly not qualified in this area.

There were several points where I read a line and found myself just staring at the book with a gaping jaw and a sense of incredulility, wondering how he could make such a strange conclusion. For example, when he discussed Sagan's novel Contact, it quickly became apparant that Davidson hadn't even read the book or he wouldn't be making such strange interpretations of the book's plot.

Additionally, Davidson's writing is incredibly simplistic; although it may appear vivid and engaging on the surface, it is full of groan-inducing cliches and overdramatized descriptions of events. This, in combination with his purely speculative conclusions on Sagan's personality, made me want to vomit.

Overall, although I was able to glimpse a small part of what made Carl Sagan so special and see a somewhat decent overview of the events in his life, I feel I was getting a blurry and distorted picture of who the man really was.

In contrast to a few of my fellow readers I found this lengthy, thoroughly researched book a good read. Did I find that Sagan had skeletons in the closet? Yes, including a claim of wife-beating. Was I surprised he was egotistical? No, especially the way he lived for self-promotion. The latter cannot be such a character trait to condemn the man since very few ego-less people ever aspire to the publishing and television genius he demonstrated. I do not ask that biographies of the people I hold in some esteem be sugar-coated (and this one isn't). I learned long ago that successful people make enemies who are all too happy to talk about them after their demise. I simply ask that the biography be well documented which this book is with over 100 pages of source references at the end.

I did not finish the book with the belief, stated elsewhere, that the author disliked Sagan. Rather, Sagan was portrayed at worst as short on hands-on science, but long on dreams and ideas. While hard scientists may fault this portion of his work, it is what endeared him to his ultimate true audience: the readers of his books and his television audience. Sagan had a gift for explaining complicated ideas to non-scientists. Was this a fault? Of course not. It was a gift. To date, no scientist has picked up his mantel with the masses.

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.