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By Benson Saler and Charles Moore Price: $24.95 Our Item Code: rosgen Postage Code: book2
198 Pages, Hardcover Features: Table of Contents, Index, Footnotes, Bibliography, Appendix, Diagrams
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| Our Review | Opinion of the webmaster, subject to debate |
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This book reviews the Roswell Incident from two specialized perspectives: cultural anthropology and balloon technology. The Roswell "myth" is seen to have at its core the crash of a top secret balloon, Project Mogul, and one of the coauthors is uniquely qualified to discuss this program. Professor Charles Moore is one of the last surviving members of the New York University team that launched the balloons. He describes the flights in great detail, and shows that the debris that crashed in the Brazel field was probably flight #4. Another co-author, Benson Saler, is an anthropology professor at Brandeis University, and discusses how this one event evolved into an ever-changing series of stories. The claims about a UFO crash were born in a social environment where everyone was expecting flying saucers. The book does not argue about what happened at Roswell: The craft was a balloon, period. The focus instead is on how the story evolved in the subsequent years. -- Glenn
| Information from the Publisher | Always supportive |
Transcending the believer-versus-skeptic debate, anthropologists Benson Saler and Charles A. Ziegler contend that the Roswell story is best understood as modern myth. Similar to traditional myths in transmission, structure and motif, the story also taps into modern beliefs in the power of technology and the duplicity of a monolithic government. The authors show how the Roswell story, like a religious myth, asserts in an "unfalisifiable" narrative the existence of superior beings. Saler and Ziegler also describe the ways in which television and tabloid newspapers keep the store alive as folklore even while presenting it as exposé.
The book also includes the account of scientist Charles B. Moore, who participated in an experiment to launch balloon-borne radar reflectors in the summer of 1947. That thes occasionally crash in the New Mexico desert forms the probable historical core of the myth.
The first book to analyse the Roswell incident as a cultural phenomenon, UFO Crash at Roswell shows how this story of a flying saucer crash rpovides not only a window on American values and beliefs but also a detailed account of the evolution of a myth.
"UFO Crash at Roswell is not simply a recounting of the events of [1947]. Rather, it is a detailed, serious examination of what we, as humans, believe about our relationship to the universe and to each other. It searches for answers about why so many believe in the crash of a flying saucer at Roswell, how these beliefs came to be, and their meaning. Highly recommended." -- Curtis Peebles, author of Watch the Skies."This book offers a convincing history of the 'crash' near Roswell, New Mexico, and of the multiple stories about it together with a rich cultural and psychological analysis of these stories. UFO Crash at Roswell persuasively explains the wreckage that is key to Roswell; the later tales of alien intrusion; and the varying assumptions, hopes, and fears that likely motivate these tales." -- Stewart Guthrie, Fordham University
"This collective case study reveals important and deeply significant elements of modern popular culture in America. The authors are to be commended for providing a cogent, neatly woven narrative that explores the making of a modern myth." -- David DeVorkin, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
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