How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.


It’s rather disturbing when a book written in 1996 is discussing problems that are very much problems today. Inadequate education for many, the denigration of science and the rise of pseudoscience, the lack of critical thinking, are things we’ve been grappling with for over thirty years and seem to be no closer to a solution.

In this book Sagan describes in detail the root of many of those problems, and, perhaps, a way to deal with them. But time has shown that we haven’t dealt with them, and so the tragedy within its writing is plain to see. Indeed, it seems to have gotten worse.

There is a great deal to digest in this book, and sometimes it can be overwhelming. But it’s well worth reading. Sagan had a lot to say, and was the best at making what he had to say understandable.

I wish he would have lived longer. I wish we would have listened to him.




( Mount TBR 2024 Book Links 1-25 )

26. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
27. The Lighthouse Keeper Kindle Edition by Alan K. Baker
28. I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson
29. The Road Not Travelled : Alternative Tales of the Wars of the Roses by Joanne R. Larner
30. King's Fool by Margaret Campbell Barnes
31. The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
32. Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR's Fight to Regulate American Capitalism by Diana B. Henriques
33. Seven Perfect Things by Catherine Ryan Hyde
34. Legends by Robert Silverberg (Editor/Contributor)
35. The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1) by Jasper Fforde
36. Echoes of an Alien Sky by James P. Hogan
37. Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
38. The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
39. The Hike by Susi Holliday
40. The Opal-Eyed Fan by Andre Norton
41. Queen by Right by Anne Easter Smith
42. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan







SEP– Twice, World, Man, Quiet, Sweet, Hold, Shallow, Invisible⁠

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that reads almost like the script for a movie” (The Wall Street Journal)—a powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the history’s worst nuclear disasters.

Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a “riveting, deeply reported reconstruction” (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.

“The most complete and compelling history yet” (The Christian Science Monitor), Higginbotham’s “superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying...extraordinary” (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.

Though the book focuses on the accident at Chernobyl, the reader is given an in-depth history of nuclear energy, down to the make-up of the atom. But it’s written in a way that the reader is easily able to follow.

All of which brings you to the accident. There’s a lot to get through, but as the situation unfolds, I was reminded of our own situation; the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, so many more concerned at how they would look, rather than how to resolve the problem. It’s a sobering look at the folly of man.

But there are no true villains here. Only the hubris of men who thought they knew everything there was to know about the complex they were tasked with running. It would turn that there was much that they didn’t know.

But there are heroes, too. The workers and the firemen who ran into the reactor, some knowing what their fate would be. Many died; many would live years with the fallout, literally, of what their time in the plant would cause.

I do wonder how much better we would do, if such a situation were to arise here. As orders cascaded from one agency to another, I have a feeling that we would be found lacking.




( Mount TBR 2020 Book Links )

Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues
by Martin J. Blaser


Tracing one scientist’s journey toward understanding the crucial importance of the microbiome, this revolutionary book will take readers to the forefront of trail-blazing research while revealing the damage that overuse of antibiotics is doing to our health: contributing to the rise of obesity, asthma, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer. In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin Blaser invites us into the wilds of the human microbiome where for hundreds of thousands of years bacterial and human cells have existed in a peaceful symbiosis that is responsible for the health and equilibrium of our body. Now, this invisible eden is being irrevocably damaged by some of our most revered medical advances—antibiotics—threatening the extinction of our irreplaceable microbes with terrible health consequences.

There have been warning about the overuse of antibiotics for years, and, other than his own unproved thesis, there's really very little new here. And of what there was, I wasn't sure what, exactly, was the author's point. How is it "bad" for H pylori to be absent from more people's systems if its presence is related to stomach cancer and ulcers? Yes, it might be more beneficial in regards to GERD and asthma, but which illnesses would most people opt for, given the choice? Stomach cancer or asthma? Ulcers or GERD? Ultimately, it seemed that the book was more about the author's war on H pylori than just about anything else.

Even when other problems are sited concerning antibiotics' overuse, much of the "proof" is circumstantial. Any certain problem may very well be caused by the overuse of antibiotics. But, then, it may not.

The book is written simply, perhaps too simply, and it could have done with better editing. And the ones (1) all being capital i's (I) was a distraction.

"A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us.

In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet--only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature.

But with a million more of us every 4 days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth--and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?"


Overpopulation is rarely addressed by environmentalists. It's the elephant in the room that everyone pretends isn't there. So it was refreshing to read a book that brings it to the forefront where it deserves to be. It's an unflinching look at what our numbers have done to the Earth—and ourselves.

The author writes of coming to an "Optimum population." But optimum population doesn't mean the maximum number that can be crammed onto the planet like industrial chickens; it's the number that the planet could sustain, while at the same time there being room enough for the rest of life. A recent study by biologists Paul Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily, using a scenario developed by Dr. John Holdren (Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,) calculated that number to be two billion. But there was a catch.

In 1930, two billion people, the entire population of the planet, used two terawatts of power, slightly more than one kilowatt per person. But today, two billion people use six terawatts of power. And since we apparently can't do without our cellphones, televisions, computers, and such, Ehrlich and Daily offered another alternative: a billion and a half people, so that everyone could have four and three-quarters kilowatts.

The biggest problem to reaching that goal is, of course, people's inability to stop procreating at a pace that will soon outstrip the Earth's ability to feed us all. Not to mention everything else. Several examples are given, such as the plight of chimpanzees. Fifty years ago, there were 1.5 million chimpanzees across twenty-one African countries. Now, there are less than 300,000. With oil being developed in Uganda, there will soon be even less.

Another example. Because of both Israel's and Palestine's policies of encouraging explosive population numbers, wildlife is being pushed out of the narrow strip of land they both claim. Unfortunately, that strip of land is also the main route for billions of birds–280 different species—as they migrate between three continents. Should anything threaten the viability of this narrow corridor, it would affect far more than those two warring states. Birds are pollinators, seed spreaders, and insect eaters; without them, the ecosystems of much of Africa and Europe could possibly collapse.

The author feels that we can stop, that we can pull back from our spiraling overpopulation. Given the examples cited, the push back from both the religious community and big business, I'm inclined to doubt it.