The Ufo Controversy in America

Rating:
Summary: Still a Basic Document, though it's time for a sequel
Review: Jacobs, a university professor, surveyed American UFO history as it stood in 1974. He began with the events of 1896 and 1897, providing a useful perspective on UFO sightings as a recurrent phenomenon. Jacobs gave particularly close attention to U.S. Air Force investigations of UFO's up to 1969, describing the clash between those who wanted to dismiss the importance of this subject and those who wanted to make it a national priority. He also described the now generally discredited contactees of the 1950's, citizens UFO groups such as NICAP, Congressional hearings, and the infamous Condon Committee Report. Much of the debate involved skeptics and advocates attacking each other's credibility. Jacobs concluded that identification of credible sightings remained the heart of the issue. Jacobs, who clearly surveyed a huge volume of material, was generally even-handed in his coverage. The book included a forward by the late J. Allen Hynek, but very few illustrations - nine black and white photographs.

While this study remains a basic document, it now is dated. An equally scholarly treatment of the history of this phenomenon since 1974 is long overdue. Hopefully, such a study will be more thoroughly illustrated.

Rating:
Summary: A scholarly, fair-minded history of the UFO phenomenon...
Review: Most UFO books tend to be written by "pro-UFO" believers who focus on the wilder aspects of the phenomenon (alien abductions, government coverups, etc.), or by so-called "skeptics" who are often more interested in ridiculing obviously flawed UFO sightings and witnesses than in honestly trying to solve the more baffling cases. Furthermore, few UFO books try to focus on the phenomenon as an historical or social event in American history, and as a result the UFO phenomenon often comes across as a disjointed and disconnected series of sightings, abductions, and bizarre events. David Jacobs, currently a professor of history at Temple University, attempted to correct these mistakes in 1975 when he wrote "The UFO Controversy in America". This book, which has become a valuable research tool for both believers and skeptics alike, is by far one of the best books ever written on the UFO phenomenon. This is NOT a poorly-researched, "wild-eyed" book done by a UFO "believer", nor is it a "hatchet-job" done by an obvious debunker. Instead, it is a well-written, well-researched, and largely fair-minded look at UFO's as an historical phenomenon. Dr. Jacobs begins by looking at how the UFO phenomenon started in June 1947 with the well-publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold of nine "flying saucers" flying in formation near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. He goes on to describe how the US Air Force and military became interested in UFO's and he gives a detailed account of the Air Force's top-secret investigations into the UFO "problem", which began with Project Sign in 1947, and then went through Project Grudge from 1949-1952 and Project Blue Book from 1952-1969. He gives an excellent account of the controversial "Condon Committee", which was a government-funded UFO research project at the University of Colorado in the late sixties. Although both UFO believers and skeptics started out with high hopes that the project would provide a "solution" to the UFO mystery, it quickly became bogged down in a nasty feud between those scientists and researchers who took UFO's seriously, and those who did not - including the project's leaders, Dr. Edward Condon and his top assistant, Robert Low. When Dr. Condon made several public remarks ridiculing UFO witnesses and it was discovered that Low had written a letter detailing how the Condon committee would pretend publicly to be "unbiased" about UFO's while it actually was "anti-UFO" in private, several of the committee's "pro-UFO" members quit in disgust and became openly critical of the project's leadership. In fact, the "Condon Report" (published in 1969), couldn't find explanations for one-third of the sightings it examined, yet Condon in his introduction to the report flatly stated that UFO's didn't exist and that science had nothing to gain from taking the phenomenon seriously. He thereafter became a fierce opponent of any attempt to treat UFO's seriously, and even tried to shut down a symposium on UFO's sponsored in 1969 by the prestigious American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Jacobs also offers a full account of almost every major UFO sighting from the Arnold incident in 1947 through the 1973 UFO "wave" (which was the last well-publicized series of sightings in US history). Unlike most books on UFO's, Jacobs attempts to be even-handed in his analysis of the subject, and he is critical of both the believers and debunkers at times. The one feature of this book which may surprise some people is that it ignores the famed "Roswell" UFO case, in which a UFO supposedly crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. In fact, the Roswell case was virtually unknown until the 1980's, and it was the Kenneth Arnold sighting, and not Roswell, which brought UFO's into the spotlight. If you're interested in reading a scholarly, well-researched and well-written history of the UFO phenomenon - the sightings, government investigations, and the people who make up both sides of this mystery - then David Jacob's book is one of the best that's been published. My only complaint is that it ends in the mid-1970's - I wish that Dr. Jacobs would give us an updated version soon. Highly recommended!