Community Reading Circle

I won't be able to make this or future meetings as I have a standing meeting that I must attend with the same schedule but I will complete the readings and provide my analysis.

I found this work to be both a historical record of key UFO events relative to government involvement from WWII to about 2012. The are a multitude of authors, 'content consultants', an editor, and illustrationist who either wrote\drew material, or extracted and consolidated existing material from other sources (e.g. Svahn\Olmos: Archieves for the Unexplained Olmos: ), but Powell, Chalker, and Thieme were the primary authors with source material coming from the others listed on the copyright page.

The integration of the authors different backgrounds and perspectives on what the reported\actual historical events, government responses and media coverage to these events are what really stands out and make the time investment worthwhile for me. Specific events where the three editors combined analytical synthesis was most valuable was: 1) how they presented the evidence for the incompetent (uninterested is a nicer word) Air Force handling of the early Ghost rocket cases, 2) how this paradigm caried over into Projects Sign and Grudge, 3) how the CIA was able to commandeer the UFO portfolio away form the Air Force and refocus it for their own interests, and finally put the whole public facing aspect of the project to rest with The Condon Report. The detailed information about how the study wound up at University of Colorado, the selection of study members, and the infighting between them is worth the time reading this tome in and of itself.

One observation\recommendation is that I wish they would have provided a year to year summarization of what the start and end state of affairs was either as a table appendix or at the begining of each chapter as this would have made it easier to understand where everyone stood (government, general public) instead of having to create reference points across chapters.