Cosmos
Companion to his landmark PBS series, Cosmos roams from the Big Bang to the Greeks to nuclear war to the search for extraterrestrial life with lyrical urgency. Sagan's central message (that we are made of stardust and that understanding the universe is our best hope for survival) influenced an entire generation of scientists.
The data has aged, and its own fans say so, calling it “more than 30 years outdated” while clarifying the book is “outdated - not ‘wrong', but gaps in understanding filled since.” Some find the “delivery was quite heavy-handed in trying to instill awe” rather than letting the material produce it. The structure reads to some as loosely connected essays or episode scripts, an “arrangement of subject matter... haphazard.” The Galileo-and-Bruno digressions that other readers love are called tedious by those who came for hard science. And a chapter maps to a TV episode, which readers feel in the seams.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
