First published in 1996, Circumstellar Habitable Zones was the first comprehensive volume to address the large-scale ecology and long-range habitability of our planet and its setting in the Solar System. It brings together 62 world-class experts in fields as diverse as planetary atmospheres, stellar evolution, microbiology, and many additional disciplines to examine the multitude of factors that define our planetary home and the evolving processes that went into making it habitable. With over 1000 references, it is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in understanding the factors that made and still make our planet and the Sun unique in detail but likely not alone in providing a place of habitation among the stars. As Dr. Sagan says in the Introduction to this book, "I conclude by paying tribute to a particular habitable zone, the only one we're really sure about-the surface of our own world. It is beautifully appropriate for us. We don't want to make the mistake of confusing cause and effect. The reason it's so appropriate is that we've evolved on it and are delicately attuned to it.

But nevertheless, you might have to go a great many light years to find one as lovely as ours." He ends with this remark: "The penultimate chapter of Steven Dole's book [Habitable Planets for Man], written back in the polluting '60s, was called 'An Appreciation of the Earth,' another example of the prescience of our honoree. Surely it is our responsibility to keep this zone habitable.".