Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends — and their amazing links to recent discoveries. By recent, we’re referring to the year of 1977 when the book was published, and received the Pulitzer Prize.

Some science has evolved ever since, but Sagan’s great mind leading us to understand some complex scientific concepts of the era in a palatable way, made the book a great read to understand how far we’ve gone understanding the universe.