UFOs

Eyes to the skies, today is World UFO Day.  World UFO Day is a day for people to gather together and watch the skies for unidentified flying objects.  July 2nd also commemorates the day a supposed UFO crashed in the 1947 Roswell Incident.  Here are ten books about UFOs and extraterrestrials.

American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by Diana Walsh Pasulka - More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions. Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, D.W. Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences, and argues that the media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.

The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs by Mark O'Connell - The wildly entertaining and eye-opening biography of J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who invented the concept of "Close Encounters" with alien life, inspired Steven Spielberg's blockbuster classic science fiction epic film and is the subject of History Channel's Project Blue Book, and made an entire nation want to believe in UFOs.
In June 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold looked out his cockpit window and saw a group of nine silvery crescents weaving between the peaks of the Cascade Mountains at an estimated 1,200 miles an hour. The media, the military, and the scientific community--led by J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer hired by the Air Force--debunked this and many other Unidentified Flying Object sightings reported across the country. But after years of denials, Hynek made a shocking pronouncement: UFOs are real.
Thirty years after his death, Hynek's agonizing transformation from skepticism to true believer remains one of the great misunderstood stories of science. In this definitive biography, Mark O'Connell reveals for the first time how Hynek's work both as a celebrated astronomer and as the U. S. Air Force's go-to UFO expert for nearly twenty years stretched the boundaries of modern science, laid the groundwork for acceptance of the possibility of UFOs, and was the basis of the hit film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With unprecedented access to Hynek's personal and professional files, O'Connell smashes conventional wisdom to reveal the intriguing man and scientist beneath the legend.

The Eerie Silence: Reviewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies - Fifty years ago, a young astronomer named Frank Drake first pointed a radio telescope at nearby stars in the hope of picking up a signal from an alien civilization. Thus began one of the boldest scientific projects in history, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). After a half-century of scanning the skies, however, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence—eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. Physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies has been closely involved with SETI for three decades and chairs the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, charged with deciding what to do if we’re suddenly confronted with evidence of alien intelligence. He believes the search so far has fallen into an anthropocentric trap—assuming that an alien species will look, think, and behave much like us. In this provocative book Davies refocuses the search, challenging existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if it does.

Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers: The Truth Behind the Misinformation, Distortion, and Derision by Debunkers, Government Agencies, and Conspiracy Conmen by Stanton T. Friedman & Kathleen Marden - There is a clear conspiracy to deny the existence of UFOs.
The mainstream media has misinformed us for years about UFO studies conducted by highly regarded scientists associated with some of the finest universities in the country. There is significant evidence that the U.S. government has covered up the alien presence through misinformation, distortion, obfuscation, and ridicule. Some prominent, politically connected scientists have engaged in the cover up. And a few professional writers have helped to successfully label any scientists who have been persuaded by the evidence and brave enough to take a stand as unscientific charlatans, fanatics, and kooks.
Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers examines the wealth of archival documents that clearly demonstrate this cooperative disinformation effort and refute the false claims made by these professional scoffers. Friedman and Marden set the record straight by examining politically motivated misinformation and presenting the compelling evidence that separates fact from fiction.

The Phoenix Lights: A Skeptic's Discovery That We Are Not Alone by Lynne D. Kitei - On March 13, 1997, something strange happened in Phoenix, Arizona. On that clear and ordinary evening, a one-mile V-shaped formation of glowing amber orbs glided silently through the heavens attracting the attention of at least 10,000 people across the state of Arizona. This is the account of that evening and the ensuing government cover-up.However, this is much more than a narrative about the largest sighting of UFOs in modern times. It is also the story of how a hard-headed medical professional moved from skepticism to belief. It is also a wide-ranging tour of UFO history (from cave paintings to the 20th century), including extensive image analysis and the testimony of a variety of well-known figures, including the former astronaut, Edgar Mitchell.

The Secret History of Extraterrestrials: Advanced Technology and the Coming New Race by Len Kasten - The extraterrestrial presence on Earth is widening and, as we enter the Aquarian Age, will be admitted officially, causing shock and an urgent universal need to understand the social and technological changes derived from our space brothers. A primer for the explosive advances humanity will experience scientifically and spiritually in the coming years, this compendium explores the ET phenomenon and its influence on humanity past and present.
The book surveys contact with ETs and abduction accounts, unexplained public and undisclosed military technology from aliens including anti-gravity devices, exopolitics (the influence of ETs in human affairs), the Iraqi Stargate, the Hybrid Project of alien interbreeding by abduction, Nazi ties to UFOS and their secret underground base in Antarctica, government cover-ups of alien interactions including Roswell, and the transformation triggered by the Hale-Bopp comet. Based on interviews with people who are witnessing the coming changes as well as those visionaries who are actually bringing them about--including John Mack, Major Jesse Marcel, Paul LaViolette, Robert Bauval, Michael Salla, and Helen Wambach--this book sketches out a breathtaking vision of the planetary revolution just around the corner.

UFO Investigations Manual: UFO Investigations from 1892 to the Present Day by Nigel Watson - UFOs have been a global phenomenon from the late 19th century to the present day. The UFO Investigator's Manual examines many UFO investigations worldwide by looking at the government reports, both official and secret, that have attempted to explain the "otherworldly". This manual also explains how you can identify a UFO yourself and how to classify an alien encounter--was it of the first, second, third, fourth or fifth kind? The findings of scientific research will also be explored, as will the human attempts at alien communication, and finally, alternative explanations of uncanny happenings coupled with over 200 illustrations.

UFOs for the 21st Century Mind: A Fresh Guide to an Ancient Mystery by Richard Dolan - This is the new must-have UFO book. For beginners and experienced researchers alike, historian Richard Dolan covers the full range of this incredibly complex topic in his uniquely engaging style. He offers fresh insights on everything connected to UFOs: ancient aliens, modern encounters, abductions, channelers, the politics and cover-up, the black budget world, the bizarre science, the social dimensions (read YouTube and Facebook), the future, and much more. Toward that end, Dolan gives practical insights on how to distinguish and investigate UFOs in today's world, where we are flooded with claims and videos and data of all types. In addition, as one of ufology's pioneers in the deep analysis of the cover-up, he offers an original perspective on how it all works and why the cover-up, despite being so entrenched and insidious, is nevertheless bound to end. He also writes on the nature of contact, speculating on who these "Others" might be. Finally, Dolan takes the reader through the "weird science" of UFOs, covering everything from propulsion to spacetime to consciousness and more.

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean - An Air Force major is ordered to approach a brilliant UFO in his Phantom jet over Tehran. He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. In Belgium, an Air Force colonel investigates a series of widespread sightings of unidentified triangular objects, and he sends F-16s to attempt a closer look. Many hundreds of eyewitnesses, including on-duty police officers, file reports, and a spectacular photograph of an unidentifiable craft is retrieved and analyzed. Here at home, a retired chief of the FAA's Accidents and Investigations Division reveals the agency's response to a thirty-minute encounter between an aircraft and a gigantic UFO over Alaska, which occurred during his watch and is documented on radar. Now all three of these distinguished men have written breathtaking, firsthand accounts about these extraordinary incidents.

Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects From Antiquity to Modern Times by Jacques Vallee & Chris Aubeck - In the past century, individuals, newspapers, and military agencies have recorded thousands of UFO incidents, giving rise to much speculation about flying saucers, visitors from other planets, and alien abductions. Yet the extraterrestrial phenomenon did not begin in the present era. Far from it. The authors of Wonders in the Sky reveal a thread of vividly rendered-and sometimes strikingly similar- reports of mysterious aerial phenomena from antiquity through the modern age. These accounts often share definite physical features- such as the heat felt and described by witnesses-that have not changed much over the centuries. Indeed, such similarities between ancient and modern sightings are the rule rather than the exception.
In Wonders in the Sky, respected researchers Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck examine more than 500 selected reports of sightings from biblical-age antiquity through the year 1879-the point at which the Industrial Revolution deeply changed the nature of human society, and the skies began to open to airplanes, dirigibles, rockets, and other opportunities for misinterpretation represented by military prototypes. Using vivid and engaging case studies, and more than seventy-five illustrations, they reveal that unidentified flying objects have had a major impact not only on popular culture but on our history, on our religion, and on the models of the world humanity has formed from deepest antiquity.