UFO

The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There

By: Garrett M. Graff

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

“One of the rare books on the topic that manages to be both entertaining and factually grounded.” —The Wall Street Journal

From the bestselling author of Raven Rock, The Only Plane in the Sky, and Watergate (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history) comes the first comprehensive and eye-opening exploration of our government’s decades-long quest to solve one of humanity’s greatest mysteries: Are we alone in the universe?

For as long as we have looked to the skies, the question of whether life on earth is the only life to exist has been at the core of the human experience, driving scientific debate and discovery, shaping spiritual belief, and prompting existential thought across borders and generations. It’s one of our culture’s favorite conversations, and yet, the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence has been largely banished to the realm of fantasy and conspiracy. Now, for the first time, the full story of our national obsession with UFOs—and the covert search by scientists, the United States military, and the CIA for proof of alien life—is told by bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff in a deeply reported and researched history.

It begins in 1947, when two headline-making sightings of strange flying objects prompt the US Air Force’s newly formed Department of Defense to create a series of secret programs to determine how unidentified phenomena may pose a threat to national security. Over the next half-century, as the atomic age gives way to the space race and the Cold War, the mission continues, bringing together an unexpected group of astronomers, military officials, civilian contactees, and true believers who bring us closer, then further, then closer again, to answering one of our most enduring questions: What exactly is out there?

Drawing from original archival research, declassified documents, and interviews with senior intelligence and military officials, Graff brings readers a story that’s “Loads of fun…[a] fascinating deep dive down the rabbit hole” (Publishers Weekly).

Exhaustive but not that insightful

This is an encyclopedic review but also felt like I didn't walk away with much

Surprisingly thinly researched

This is a book that demonstrates the limitations one encounters rapidly when relying on the government's company line on UFO's and some associated phenomena. The lack of questioning is kind of astounding. There is a lot of good info in this book, but unfortunately it's hidden behind a lot of debunking (some in good-faith; but a lot of it is sloppy and ignorant of the facts at best).

The notion that the government is trying to hide that "they" actually know very little about UFO's has a lot of validity to it; the US Civilian Government as a whole probably does "know" a lot less than most people give them credit for simply because of how the bureaucracy works. There also almost certainly is not a single secret group within the US government pulling all the strings (several different groups with contradictory agendas, and priorities, all jockying for access to a giant pool of illicit funding that none of them control, is far more probable). For more info on the games the US government plays with words, documents, and information I highly recommend the books John Greenewald Jr. (of the The Black Vault document archive site) has written; see Inside the Black Vault, and Secrets from the Black Vault.

Simply put, the fingers on the right hand are barely aware that there is a right hand, let alone that there is a left hand doing other things entirely different from the right hand (and equally as unaware of the right hand's existence, let alone what it is doing). Take the NRO for example. This is a government office that was secretly brought into existence shortly after WWII, and existed (and grew) for over a decade before the National security architecture allowed its existence to become known to Congress and regulators (let alone to the American voters). The UFO and associated phenomena topic is very much one where the devil is in the details, and the details that the government has publicly acknowledged are riddled with contractions, half-truths, and demonstrably false statements. Further more, there is a planet-sized difference between what the US civilian government knows about the phenomena, and what the national security state knows (and also what certain private research companies with sweatheart connections to the national security state know).

If this book gets you interested in the topic of the phenomena that is great, but "the inside story of the US Government's search for alien life here - and out there" it most certainly is not. The "surface level story of the US Government's public half-assed research into the phenomena" it certainly is.

It takes reading about 50-60 books to become familiar on a very basic level with this phenomena and the broad state of publicly available research around it; this is a terrible book to start your personal journey with.

That said, I highly recommend Graff's other books, his book on Watergate in particular. I only wish he had brought the same level of curiosity and rigor to this text.

Finally explained without bias

Best research attempt by any author ever to break down the full story of past encounters. The very last quote of the book sums up a very interesting point. I only wish we as a world would invest such massive amounts of time and money in healing our own earthly problems.

Disappointing

For the most part this book seems to lead to few conclusions and in my mind is a disappointment. It’s more of a list of occurrences and very little extrapolation into ideas of what UFOs could be and what they probably are which I’m actually fine with but it’s doesn’t make for a compelling book. Just a disappointment.

Excellent, Exhaustive, Thoughtful

This book is succeeded at presenting a comprehensive history of UFO's and the people associated with them. It was fair, neither critical nor enthusiastic for one side or the other.