[X] My Assistant

[Steffen]

Which is in Your opinion the best Sagan biography ?

By The Way, is the DonDavis on this forum by any chance the Donald Davis of:
http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/SAGAN.html

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Which is in Your opinion the best Sagan biography?

For me, this one is easy: Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson. Not only is the book highly informative, more importantly, it's not a hagiography. Davidson's balanced account gives the good and the bad, both professionally and personally.

[ljk4-1]

I found Poundstone's book to be more focused on Sagan's science
accomplishments while not ignoring his personal life - but he also did
not get tabloidish about it, whereas Davidson seemed to almost relish
pointing out the downside of virtually everything Sagan did and said,
making a number of questionable psychological analyses along the way.

But they are both very interesting reads about a very interesting and
dynamic life.

The point is, Sagan was a human being, not an applicant for sainthood,
and what matters is that he did a LOT for promoting science to the public
as well as making a lot of science possible. He cared about what he did
and he could translate his work to the public - definitely not a collection
of skills that is owned by many other scientists to this day.

There is also a new book out - a collection of interviews with Carl Sagan
from the early 1970s until 1995:

http://www.upress.state.ms.us/catalog/fall...carl_sagan.html

I hope some day someone will come out with a collection of all of Sagan's
hundreds of technical science papers, which date back to the early 1960s.
I have only seen a few of them.