Cosmos

A Personal Voyage

By: Carl Sagan

Narrated by: LeVar Burton, Seth MacFarlane, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ann Druyan

Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

RETURNING TO TELEVISION AS AN ALL-NEW MINISERIES ON FOX

Cosmos is one of the bestselling science books of all time. In clear-eyed prose, Sagan reveals a jewel-like blue world inhabited by a life form that is just beginning to discover its own identity and to venture into the vast ocean of space. Cosmos retraces the fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into consciousness, exploring such topics as the origin of life, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, spacecraft missions, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies, and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science.

Includes introductory music: "Heaven and Hell" by Vangelis from Cosmos: A Personal Voyage used with permission from Druyan-Sagan Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Praise for Cosmos

“Magnificent... With a lyrical literary style, and a range that touches almost all aspects of human knowledge, Cosmos often seems too good to be true.” - The Plain Dealer

“Sagan is an astronomer with one eye on the stars, another on history, and a third - his mind’s - on the human condition.” - Newsday

“Brilliant in its scope and provocative in its suggestions...shimmers with a sense of wonder.” - The Miami Herald

“Sagan dazzles the mind with the miracle of our survival, framed by the stately galaxies of space.” - Cosmopolitan

“Enticing...iridescent...imaginatively illustrated.” - The New York Times Book Review

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©1980 Carl Sagan Productions, Inc (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Foreword © 2013 by Ann Druyan. “Reflections on Carl Sagan’s Cosmos” essay © 2013 by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I learned a good bit

 Reasons I like this book was good
1.) Extremely informative accurate science
 2.) Relatively easy to understand
3.) Well written
4.) Narrated by a few different brilliant people

Reasons this book irritated me

1.) Science from the 80s. I constantly I had to remind myself it was written 37 years ago.

2.) Atheism and overly religious people bother me because of the closed-mindedness that comes with those states of perception.

3.) This book plays ignorant to the fact that the government not only controls information but also material items that have been out for years. With that being said if aliens ever did land on Earth I doubt our government would let us know or tell us the truth until it was Declassified in a CIA file 150 years from now.

Needs updating

The stars may never change (from a human point of view), but politics do. Today there is no USSR anymore and a nuclear war threat feels distant. The author dedicates too many pages to these deep concerns of the 80’s.

This Book is a MUST READ for all of humanity.

Carl Sagan is a rapper and a gemius. In this book, he accurately summarizes the most prevalent concerns and desires affecting humanity. While inspiring a deep desire for future knowledge and space exploration, he emphasizes respect and care for the human race as a whole, and the exercise of responsible lifestyle, progression and interraction on our pale, blue dot: Planet Earth.

Please read this book, it is well worth the time and money. ❤

An Easy Listen

The first 30 minutes or so were a bit more difficult to listen to than the rest of the book because they give background information on the book and the author by his wife, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Seth MacFarlane but once you get through that, LeVar Burton narrates the rest and he's really easy to listen to. I thought the book would have a lot of dry information but it doesn't, it provides a lot of perspective and thought-provoking notions with the content.

it is very comprehensive and extremely structured.

narration was very crisp and kept me engrossed throughout. Has precious bits of history and technology

a peek into the past and the future

i was well aware of carl sagan back when johnny carson was inviting him on The Tonight Show and having fun mimicking sagan's pronunciation of "billions." however, i wasn't aware of what sagan had poured into the book he was promoting.

Cosmos is a wonderful trip that asks as many questions as it answers. it examines and provokes as many thoughts about the earth - and the behavior of earthlings - as it does about distant planets and galaxies throughout the universe. i learned a great deal about history, both on earth and in space, but i also learned that there is so much more that we don't even know.

naturally, it would have been wonderful for sagan to have narrated this himself, but that doesn't take anything away from what's waiting for you.

One of the best but Levar!

Levar’s narration is odd to say the least. He tries a little hard to be dramatic almost in the level of old 1920’s radio dramas. It doesn’t detract from this masterpiece of astronomy. Plus they have the original awesome music at the beginning and the end of the audiobook.

Entertaining and Enlightening

This audio's narration was performed by LeVar Burton, Seth McFarlane, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan. Although this work was published in 1980, much included within the pages is still very relevant today, much more knowledge has also been acquired. Time doesn't stand still. In this work Carl Sagan invites the reader on a journey through space and time, well written, I was entertained and enlightened. It is much more than a science book written by a astrophysicist as you will find out when you immerse yourself into the story, sit back, relax and take an incredible voyage into the cosmos... “Space the final frontier”

A necessary listen

Excellent content with superb reading by a pro. I really enjoyed both the author's and the readers passion and enthusiasm for the subject.

Cosmos. Best. Book. Ever.

Truly amazing book. Very insightful and still very relevant. The concepts put forward in the book, though complex, are made easy for most listeners to understand and that is why this book is amazing. The narration was also very well done.