A collection of essays centered on science, especially discussions on cosmology and astronomy. The subjects vary from a background piece on Einstein to an interesting piece that compares discussions of those who return from the dead to the birth experience. Some pieces are typical only for the 70s such as the evaluation of Velikovsky's nonsense (my words... Sagan is too fair-minded for this opinion.) The section on climate change needs updating, lest it become ballast for those who might use it for their irresponsible agenda of denial, but that of course isn't going to happen. Listening to it, I can imagine how the oil industry would love to use it to express doubt about the obvious findings on how the environment suffers from the human footprint.