Sasha Sagan has written a book for turbulent times. It’s for believers, those of us who are nonbelievers, and for those in-between. Its evocatitle, For Small Creatures Such as We, came from her parents’ only work of fiction, the novel Contact. Sasha Sagan’s parents, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, gave her a childhood rich in both science and meaning. And her parents were true collaborators. In fact, Sagan notes that although her title phrase (the rest of it reads, “the vastness is bearable only through love”) gets attributed to Carl, “It’s my mom who actually came up with those words, which have served as a perfect crystallization of our family’s philosophy.”
For Small Creatures Such as We: Finding Wonder and Meaning in Our Unlikely World. By Sasha Sagan. G.P Putnam’s Sons, 2019. ISBN 978-0-735-21877-2. 274 pp., $26.00.
The details of each of her parents’ historic religious backgrounds as Orthodox Jews and how they came to secular, evidence-based beliefs is a wonderful read. Carl told his devout father, Harry, that he no longer believed, and Harry responded: “The only sin would be to pretend.” Yet Sagan relates that being Jewish is so much more than just religion; it is history and culture intertwined. Modern DNA tests can reveal that she is Ashkenazi Jew, for example, but no such test reveals you to be Presbyterian.