Occasionally a reader of two reaches out to me, asking for a recommendation of what might be one of the better books into the whole UFO affair that might be reading.
For the uninformed, regular readers of this space know of my fondness for All Things High Strangeness, and I’ve been shown to cover them from time-to-time. My issue with making recommendations is that I haven’t read all that many tomes into the phenomenon – certainly more than most but far less than anyone claiming to be an expert of such subject matter – so I’m always hesitant to give out suggestions of what might or might not be ‘the better’ books. I will say that I’ve read far more than I wouldn’t pass along praise for than I’d give a reviewer’s thumbs-up, and this is only because – from my limited perspective – I’ve ventured into published works that ‘feel’ more like vanity projects (or vanity perspectives) and offer little of substance to a field needing more light shone upon it (for a variety of reasons).
But because I’ve been recently asked and I just so happen to have finished something of interest let me point folks in the direction of Jacques F. Vallée and Paola Leopizzi Harris’ Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret.
This one was first published in 2021 and then expanded (with additional information and commentary) again in 2022, and I purchased the updated edition and am very happy with it. The book is a 300+ pages plus investigation into the little covered 1945 UFO crash and recovery story that, frankly, I’ve seen more writers either dismiss and/or ‘poopoo’ as having so little evidence that it doesn’t warrant any further inquiry. Let me assure you that – based entirely on Vallée and Harris’ learned opinions here – nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, whatever may have taken place in the outskirts of San Antonito, New Mexico might very well be vastly more significant than many other sights and/or encounters precisely because not only was evidence recovered and multiple eyewitnesses involved but also the occurrence can possibly be linked to other events in human history (the test of nuclear bombs in Trinity) and other well-documented cases of unexplained phenomena. This rarely discussed incident predates a great deal of activity that took place in the late 1940’s and perhaps shows that not all answers to the great, existential puzzle are beyond mankind’s reach. The sad truth is that we may have been looking in the wrong places because of our government’s sleight of hand, meaning that agents just beyond the federal bureaucracy may have been holding the trump cards since the beginning.
While many authors have ‘made bank’ on linking the American secret development of the atomic bomb to the increase of UFO sightings across the fruited plains, Vallée and Harris actually push the research a bit further as well as coaxing it into a vastly more useful direction: indeed, it looks as though they may have found some significant similarities between the San Antonito event and a few others. That connection alone makes the book well worth a read as I can’t tell you how tired I am of skeptics arguing that the lack of connectivity amongst documented sightings is the biggest reason to dismiss the entire concern as a product of a society’s overactive imagination. Because the pair are able to establish some basic commonalities between three of UFOlogy’s bigger cases, I retain a bit of hope that one day we’ll be able to get beyond ‘it’s all just coincidence’ and maybe have a serious, frank study to see what more we might be missing.
And it isn’t always a perfect read. The authors have been a great deal of time into presenting nearly every word of some exhaustive interviews. Occasionally, these transcripts get repetitive or even a bit tiresome (with their accuracy), but it’s clear that – as scientists – they’re well aware of the tactics critics in the government and media use to dismiss authentic work and are hoping to circumvent those quibbles by giving more information instead of less. What they do prove here – so far as this reviewer is concerned – is that they’ve gone to great lengths to validate eyewitness accounts through cross-referencing damn near anything available, and the tale told – whether you ultimately believe it or not – is still very convincing and equally concerning.
-- EZ
For the uninformed, regular readers of this space know of my fondness for All Things High Strangeness, and I’ve been shown to cover them from time-to-time. My issue with making recommendations is that I haven’t read all that many tomes into the phenomenon – certainly more than most but far less than anyone claiming to be an expert of such subject matter – so I’m always hesitant to give out suggestions of what might or might not be ‘the better’ books. I will say that I’ve read far more than I wouldn’t pass along praise for than I’d give a reviewer’s thumbs-up, and this is only because – from my limited perspective – I’ve ventured into published works that ‘feel’ more like vanity projects (or vanity perspectives) and offer little of substance to a field needing more light shone upon it (for a variety of reasons).
But because I’ve been recently asked and I just so happen to have finished something of interest let me point folks in the direction of Jacques F. Vallée and Paola Leopizzi Harris’ Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret.
This one was first published in 2021 and then expanded (with additional information and commentary) again in 2022, and I purchased the updated edition and am very happy with it. The book is a 300+ pages plus investigation into the little covered 1945 UFO crash and recovery story that, frankly, I’ve seen more writers either dismiss and/or ‘poopoo’ as having so little evidence that it doesn’t warrant any further inquiry. Let me assure you that – based entirely on Vallée and Harris’ learned opinions here – nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, whatever may have taken place in the outskirts of San Antonito, New Mexico might very well be vastly more significant than many other sights and/or encounters precisely because not only was evidence recovered and multiple eyewitnesses involved but also the occurrence can possibly be linked to other events in human history (the test of nuclear bombs in Trinity) and other well-documented cases of unexplained phenomena. This rarely discussed incident predates a great deal of activity that took place in the late 1940’s and perhaps shows that not all answers to the great, existential puzzle are beyond mankind’s reach. The sad truth is that we may have been looking in the wrong places because of our government’s sleight of hand, meaning that agents just beyond the federal bureaucracy may have been holding the trump cards since the beginning.
While many authors have ‘made bank’ on linking the American secret development of the atomic bomb to the increase of UFO sightings across the fruited plains, Vallée and Harris actually push the research a bit further as well as coaxing it into a vastly more useful direction: indeed, it looks as though they may have found some significant similarities between the San Antonito event and a few others. That connection alone makes the book well worth a read as I can’t tell you how tired I am of skeptics arguing that the lack of connectivity amongst documented sightings is the biggest reason to dismiss the entire concern as a product of a society’s overactive imagination. Because the pair are able to establish some basic commonalities between three of UFOlogy’s bigger cases, I retain a bit of hope that one day we’ll be able to get beyond ‘it’s all just coincidence’ and maybe have a serious, frank study to see what more we might be missing.
And it isn’t always a perfect read. The authors have been a great deal of time into presenting nearly every word of some exhaustive interviews. Occasionally, these transcripts get repetitive or even a bit tiresome (with their accuracy), but it’s clear that – as scientists – they’re well aware of the tactics critics in the government and media use to dismiss authentic work and are hoping to circumvent those quibbles by giving more information instead of less. What they do prove here – so far as this reviewer is concerned – is that they’ve gone to great lengths to validate eyewitness accounts through cross-referencing damn near anything available, and the tale told – whether you ultimately believe it or not – is still very convincing and equally concerning.
-- EZ
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