Sagan is reconciled, tells about his illness and hands over his will - save the earth
Two book publishers have recently chosen to publish books by popular science writers who are no longer with us. This house was published by Zamora by chance, when she accidentally published the book "Chicken's Teeth and Horse's Toes" near the death of the author, Stephen J. Gold. Maariv Library had much more time to plan. Carl Sagan died in 1996, and she had already published (under the Hed Artzi brand) his almost last book "A Haunted World" back in 1997.
The fact that these two are not with us is a sad fact. These two were great scientists but also great explainers of science. There aren't many of them, and it's a shame that one who can do this is satisfied with his work as a scientist only without the media aspect - and I mean Prof. Mario Livio from the Hubble Space Telescope Scientific Institute (formerly from the Technion).
My opinion on Carl Sagan is known. This is one of the people who influenced me, and if it wasn't for his book "Broca's Mind" (which I would suggest to the publisher to think about reprinting it) I doubt if I would have become a journalist specializing in the field of science and at certain times also in the field of environmental quality.
The concern for the earth against the greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer began even then, in the seventies in his book "Broca's Mind". It reaches its peak in the current book "Billions and Billions". In fact, after venting his anger on the atmosphere filled with hatred for science and the cultivation of mediocrity in the education system (in the book A World Haunted by Demons), here he is much more reconciled and he even finds the common ground for scientists and religious people - the fear of the earth's ecological system being undermined.
He also attacks the position of the administration that finances the price of oil barrels with the help of wars instead of finding alternative energy. He even calculates that if you take the real cost - the wars over oil like the Gulf War in 1991, and even the foreign aid to oil producing countries, the real price of a barrel is not 20 dollars but 80.
In the book he also deals with difficult questions such as the issue of abortion, the explosion of the population on earth, about wars and human suffering (in Soviet Russia and the American Civil War. As a great scientist, he illuminates unknown sides of historical periods.
Sagan also copes well with his illness. Billions and billions of stars did not help him beat the cancer that spread in his body. But skepticism did not stop him even in his last moments. The book is so up-to-date that an event that took place a few weeks before his death - the discovery of the stone from Mars and the search for life on it is mentioned there. It turns out that he calls on his fellow scientists to produce extraordinary evidence before drawing extraordinary conclusions.
