SOURCE: "Candid Camera," in Scientific American, Vol. 272, No. 5, May, 1995, pp. 106-7.

In the following review, Morrison offers praise for Pale Blue Dot, concluding that "no recent book has done better at making plain the subtle nature and fascination of scientific investigation."

This book opens with a generous gift to us all. It was made early in 1990, when the space probe Voyager completed its scripted dozen-year tour of duty. Well beyond Neptune and far north of the plane of the solar system, the craft received a final set of new commands, no part of the original mission. Look back, Voyager, to the now distant inner planets! Carl Sagan and a few others had argued and waited years for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA to schedule a shoestring effort to snap just one candid portrait of the earth among the planets. They succeeded brilliantly.

The spacecraft recorded a mosaic...