The Award Tally
FictionNonfiction

Wishlist

Saved in this browser only - it isn't synced to your other devices.

Back to the full ranking
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark cover

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan

1

award won

8

score

#1142 of 3,809 books · #97 in Science & Technology

Won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology (1996).

The Demon-Haunted World won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a New York Times bestseller. How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don't understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry and the testable hypotheses of science? Casting a wide net through history and culture, 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. He examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies as witchcraft, faith healings, 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.

Buy this book at AmazonAd
Publisher
Ballantine Books
ISBN-13
9780307801043
Topics
Scientific skepticismPseudoscience and critical thinkingRationality and society

Other awarded books from Carl Sagan

If you liked The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, you could also like these