Skeptical books are much less marketable and so are comparatively rare.
Sagan, director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, is perhaps the best known popularizer of science today. Taking his title from the ancient In- dian text Isa Upanishad, Sagan draws persuasive parallels between the oldest demon stories of the human mind and modern paranormal phenomena of spirit haunting and alien abduction. The vocabulary changes, he notes, but the underlying experiences appear to remain the same. Even ghosts and demons were better than nameless fear. Sagan finds an impending threat not only in the New Age mania for the paranormal and religious miracles but also in that much broader realm known as pseudoscience.