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Rating: 
Summary: Devastating truth about the "face"
Review: After the subsequent closer-up photos of the "face," it is undeniable that the so-called "face" is NOT a face after all. Where was Hoagland when the defining photos came out? Apparently working on the 5th edition. No wonder he wears a cape. Without it, he'd have to face the devasting truth that he is mortal after all.
Rating: 
Summary: Can one be an open minded skeptic?
Review: First - I have not read the book, but have heard Hoagland discuss the issues of the book on several occasions. Therefore the rating I must give is meaningless. Now, Amidst the reviews you can read here, people tend to be polarized in their opinions, and they offer "facts" to support their contentions. Be careful. One of the more compelling comments notes that a recent higher resolution image by the Mars Global Surveyor demonstrates "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that the face seen in decades-old images is an artifact. Apparently these individuals are unaware of the numerous and sudden inconsistencies in the data provided by the Mars Global Surveyor immediately around the time that the face and other parts of Cydonia were being imaged. NASA is a public organization and therefore published "unaltered" images on it's own website. The one(s) of Cydonia cited by individuals in other reviews were of a curiously poor resolution compared to ones the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) had previously been sending of the rest of Mars. NASA claimed that the weather conditions suddenly changed at that time. This is entirely possible. However, reported digital analysis of the pictures claimed to reveal evidence of specific alterations of the image (in simple terms, information was missing) and suggested that the low resolution was a consequence of attempts to hide the fact that the image had obviously been altered. I am not qualified to evaluate the digital analysis, but I can tell you that when I visited the NASA site several days after reports of the digital analysis accused NASA of doctoring the image, NASA had uploaded a different version of the image that the supposed "original" it had published three days earlier. The newer image still did not show a face, by the way. So, while I am a scientist, and a skeptic, and believe that the scientific method is extremely important - I have encountered no evidence to positively discount Hoagland's beliefs - and certainly not the more recent images by MGS. If Mars and the larger questions of life and the universe interest you, by all means enjoy the book, and take the time to learn as much as is known about the issues - for you know what they say... "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing"...and I believe some of the individuals who are passionately polarized in these reviews are a bit dangerous, especially if others are not careful and believe the things they write...
Rating: 
Summary: Get past the crappy writing and you're okay
Review: Guys, Hoagland is a scientist, NOT A WRITER. This book reads like it was written by a high school dropout. Incomplete sentances about, stunted paragraphs, lots of ellipses leading into nowhere... But so what? His job is to look at stuff and figure out what it is. His brain is used to asking questions and answering them. What he's found is, at the least, very neat. At the most, it points to something new and exciting discoveries. WIthin this book, Hoagland describes how he, with the help of two sattalite imaging specialists, investigated a little photo taken from the Viking expedition to Mars. To make a long story short, it looks like a face, there's lots of other formations nearby that look similarly artificial, and Mr. Hoagland thinks that the whole picture points to some kind of prior high civilization on Mars. You judge for yourself. Read through the hopes and dreams that (unfortunately) distort what it is he's trying to get at. Look through the diagrams, the credentials of those who have worked with him on this project... put aside the aesthetics and glean out the science from the garbage. To those who say you can see mathematics in your bowl of cheerios -- does that negate the mathematics from every other source? C'Mon man, the brain is a pattern-finding machine -- that's what it's for. Because we see patterns in just about everything, does that mean there are no legitimate patterns to be found? Should we discard every pattern we don't intuitively agree with, or offends our tender sensibilities? When does a bowl of cheerios because less mathematically meaningful, than say, the circlular artwork in the Mosque? Anyway, give it a look. At 20% off, you can afford to.
Rating:
Summary: Total Bunk
Review: I actually bought this book when it came out, and still have my first edition copy. I was not convinced then, even though I took his claim at face value (pun intended): a hill on Mars looks like a face. So? There are millions of features on Mars this size in the photos, and some of them look like faces, some look like bunnies, Santa, skyscrapers, and anything else imaginable. Spinning a tale of significance out of this is as silly as doing the same for pictures you see in the clouds.
Later, I learned that much of what he treats as significant is actually flaws in the photo or processing artefacts. Furthermore, his allegations about NASA coverups and such are uncalled for, and clearly false in newer missions when images are available to the world as soon as they are downloaded.
An excellent description of Hogland's brand of interpreting compression artefacts as details in the photo can be found on the badastronomy web site.
I'd give it a negative number of stars if this form would let me, because impressionable people are worse off for having read it.
Rating:
Summary: 1/ (Resonable Doubt)
Review: I can't say that I understand most of the science stuff but I do get the point. That some very smart people have been looking into this subject for a while and have presented some very compelling evidence towards that end.-SM
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book and IGNORE the unopen-minded skeptics
Review: I have read this book three times and each time I found myself absolutely intrigued. Hoagland has done extensive research for more than a decade on this subject, and you can look at the evidence yourself. It is something worth exploring many hundred more times than less importrant soil samples on Mars. The mathematical evidence is overwhelming. The critics that have reviewed this book do not state why this is nonsence and why it is fantacy. Nothing in the book is unscientific. Carl Sagan himself stated that more photos are needed on this interesting subject. Yet, in his recent book, he stated that he looked at the "face" and it didn't look like anything worth studying. If this is the attitude among the scientific community then we will never fully explore possibly one of the greatest discoveries of human-kind. If Sagan were still here, I would challenge him to read the book and take a look at the evidence, and then write in his book what he thinks. You can't just look at the pictures. Don't let your past conspiricy theories, comic books, or television programs stand in the way of reading this book. It may be similar to 2001, but 20,000 leagues under the sea turned out to be a reality too! This book is a must-read. When NASA takes more pictures of the structures, and we find out that the images are in fact built structures, you can be happy that you read the book first!
Rating:
Summary: Very gutsy, exhaustingly researched, a stunner...
Review: I read some of the negative reviews here at Amazon and they all struck me as inane drivel of the highest degree. If you're going to agree or disagree with any thesis you have to show why. If all you're going to come up with is name-calling and arguments about "math in cereal" (!!!, man, give us a break) or other , even worse, "arguments" like "NASA says it aint no face and that's what i believe" you're in my mind absolutely and positively hopeless. If, in the end, NASA and any institution of that order is for you a credible source, why bother thinking? Turn your brain OFFICIALLY off and let whomever, may that be NASA or anybody else, programm it for you. Why read what Hoagland or a number of other researchers out there profess? "The Monuments Of Mars" is a book for people who are keen of doing something rare: think for themselves. In order to do that, you need to entertain whatever available notion out there even if it totally comes in conflict with the definition of the world in your mind. Especially if such a notion is well argumentated and has been hardly refuted with adequacy. For those not familiar with what's presented in this book, here's a very ( and i mean, very) short summary: Hoagland along with a team of scientists ranging anywhere from geologists to physicists to computer programmers who resoluted photos, to historians and other specialties, analysed a vast series of photographs taken by NASA of the Cydonia region in Mars, photos in which the infamous "Face" appears, along with other clearly geometrical features such as pyramids or the clear designs of a former city. All these features, and their undisputed geometry, one would have to be either blind not to see, or terminally brainwashed. The only question which remained, was to first verify through statistical probability, what the odds were of these features having been made "naturally". The odds are so staggeringly low that it would be a travesty to dismiss these as natural creations. The next, and more important questions have to do with who made them and why. Why resort to odds when we could have more and clearer photographs of these features so the matter could be put to rest? Well, that's just it (especially for the naysayers), because Nasa refuses to rephotograph the region with a high resolution camera saying there's nothing there to be seen..And that despite all the "noise" about these features. Mysterious if not downright conspiratorial? Yes, obviously and undoudtedly so. I don't intend to go more into what Hoagland says. You can pretty much imagine in broad lines, and besides it's your decicion and your inclination whether you'll invest the effort in reading his book anyway. To me, if your inclination is beforehand negative, you would've easily fit in in a past world who thought the world is flat because the church or "scientists" say so. And i could list a high number of such embarrasing examples, there's no shortage of them nor will there ever be. As to the book itself, it is one which is incredibly researched. The degree of scholarship in it is superb, and more importantly, it is not the work of ONE person. Hoagland did not sit down and think all this up as some would like the case to be. There's a vast array of people who worked with him from the scientific community and who agree with him. There's also a number of other resarchers who did NOT research this subject but yet came to the same conclusions with him. Sitchin would be one. Robert Temple would be another. And the list does go on you know, as any search on alternative archaelogy in Amazon or elsewhere would show you. The fact that we know only 5000-7000 years of human history when this planet numbers over a million years of existence means that we are actually in the dark about our origins. At least as far as "mainstream science" is concerned and this is a fact they accept themselves while offering us all kinds of comical explanations and tons of "missing links" in the process. The truth might be in fact very simple, that is, simple if you actually realise that the Universe is very probably bursting with intelligent life, not only now, but for millions of years in the past, and that the chance that we, are in very intriguing ways connected with the "out there" is also nothing shocking. It only is if you allow the world in your mind to be something painfully small. Only reading this book will more than likely not be enough to provide you with all the data supporting such theories. Yes i mean data, and not speculations. Raw data. You will need to pick up some Sitchin, some Temple, some Colin Wilson, or others. Only then will you able to form a more spherical and stronger opinion. But if you haven't done so up to now, Hoagland's book is a great place to start.
Absolutely essential material for people not content with the hilarious version of the truth spoon-fed to us on a daily basis.
Rating:
Summary: The complete history of the NASA coverup of The Face
Review: In "The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever," author Richard Hoagland gives a heavily referenced history of The Face on Mars and other suspiciously "non-natural" structures and features of the Martian surface. He describes how The Face was first discovered shortly after the Viking Mission started sending back images from Mars. NASA immediate pooh-poohed the possibility of its artificial origin. The images of The Face were too startling to be ignored, though, and research by Vince DePietro, Greg Molenaar, Hoagland and others resulted in the discovery of other unnatural, pyramid-like structures located in the vicinity of The Face. Hoagland provides solid arguments for the claims he makes. Often, this slows the pace of reading this thick book. But, by taking his time in explaining his claims, he tackles many of the arguments that might arise in the reader's own mind. Hoagland's book describes how NASA has pointedly ignored evidence from noted scientists and organizations verifying the suspiciously non-natural nature of the Cydonia region on Mars that is home to these anamolous features. Finally, Hoagland documents how NASA has refused to PUBLICALLY rephotograph Cydonia and suggests that NASA may have already done so in secret. He offers that there may be dark reasons for this suspected duplicity. "The Monuments of Mars" describes an engaging (and ongoing) real-world mystery. But, it is also frustrating in that the evidence that could solve this mystery is being withheld by the very government agency that is supposed to be honestly and publicly disseminating it...
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