Which of Carl Sagan's books is YOUR personal favorite?

A new, 13-episode science documentary TV series called “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” debuted on Fox and the National Geographic Channel this past Sunday. This new series is a follow-up series to Carl Sagan’s hit 1980 series, “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” which was first broadcast on PBS.

Carl Sagan is one of my all-time favorite authors, and the “Cosmos” TV show helped make him famous. His books are great and they are arguably the best popular science books on the market. Sagan, who died in 1996, was a prolific author, and he wrote or coauthored over a dozen books.

What follows is a complete list of the books that he wrote, co-wrote or edited over the years, in order of their publication.

- Planets (1966)

- Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966)

- UFOs: A Scientific Debate (1972)

- Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1973)

- Mars and the Mind of Man (1973)

- The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective (1973)

- Other Worlds (1975)

- The Dragons of Eden (1977)

- Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record (1978)

- Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (1979)

- Cosmos (1980)

- The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War (1984)

- Comet (1985)

- Contact: A Novel (1985)

- A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race (1990)

- Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are (1993)

- Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

- Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1997)

- The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Over the year’s I’ve read most of Sagan's books, including “The Dragons of Eden,” “Broca’s Brain,” “Cosmos,” “Contact,” “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors,” “Pale Blue Dot,” “The Demon-Haunted World” and “Billions and Billions.” Of those, my personal favorite, far and away, is 1995’s “The Demon-Haunted World,” which goes to great lengths to explain the scientific method by looking closely at a number of fringe science topics like UFOs and parapsychology.

Be forewarned. Over the years I’ve noticed that I get a lot of funny looks when I tell people that I love this book. Number one, most people have never heard of it, and second, it’s got the world “demon” in the title. However, neither has kept me from wanting to re-read this book over and over again. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, hands down.

“Contact” is also really good and is a topnotch work of fiction. Many of you may be familiar with the book thanks to the 1997 feature film, “Contact,” which starred Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Angela Bassett and Rob Lowe. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, wrote the screenplay. It’s a great movie, so check it out if you’ve never seen it.

In the end, how many of Sagan’s books have you had the chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Which is your personal favorite? Let us know in the comments section below.