Word: broca
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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First, the charms. The flamboyance and imagination which raise Sagan to something of a '70s cult figure rescue a lot a Broca's Brain. Sagan recounts, for example, a colorful and enthusiastic history of his profession, emphasizing the incredibly rapid blossoming of American astronomy. In an equally lively essay, he describes the ludicrous procedure scientists use to name newly-discovered craters...
...while there have been grumblings. His colleagues, principally, confront him with their contention that publicizing and practicing science are two irreconcilable aims. So Broca's Brain is an entirely representative work--on the one hand we're treated to Sagan's youthful enthusiasm, imagination, and charm; on the other we must contend with the superficiality and disjointedness which, many claim, have marred his entire career...
Also entertaining are two short portraits, one of Albert Einstein, the other of Robert Goddard. Broca's Brain was published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's birth, and the chapter Sagan devotes to him is reflective of the event, brimming with amusing anecdotes and quotes. The portrait of Goddard glows with Sagan's adulation of the great eccentric and pioneer. If there's any problem with these two portraits, in fact, it's that they're almost oo good--you wish you were reading a book by one of the two, instead of just a chapter about...
Generally, you can't but leave the book with a rudimentary understanding of some of the contemporary beliefs and trends in astronomy. And Sagan conscientiously avoids littering the narrative with autobiography--though that will doubtless come in a couple of years. Then there's his imagination: Broca's Brain reaches it greatest heights when he unleashes it fully, describing, for instance, the prospect of a solar sailing regatta...
...these recommendations, though, can't compete with Sagan's and his editor's mistakes. The main problem lies in Broca's Brain's construction. Sagan strings loosely together 25 of his essays--published in everything from Physics Today to Holiday magazine--only one of which is more than 15 pages long. The book is hence painfully disjointed; he leaps from topic to topic at random. Redundancy creeps in--a theme introduced in one essay is often uselessly repeated in a second, and not infrequently beaten into the ground in a third. Most seriously, though, these essays are just too short...