Customer Reviews

The Flying Saucers Are Real

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is not fiction. The author researches REAL facts and sightings, and concludes that the saucers are interplanetary. Donald Keyhoe made a serious recearch, from an "inside" perspective , having some access to original military files. Before he started the research, he would not believe in the "visitors from space" answer. But checking thoroughly every other possible answer, he saw that they didn't fit in the sightings and the reports.

This book is a *must* have to anyone who wants to know the truth about the UFO phenomenon. It contains everything, from the reports and reactions to the military cover up. The *visitors* were here even before we were born. Anyone with a clear mind will see this.

In the realm of UFOlogy, this book was not only one of the first, but also one of the best reports ever written on the subject. I first read it in the early 1950's, and believe me, it is perhaps the one book that fueled my interest not only in UFO's but in all forms of Fortean Phenonema, both past and present for the last fifty-three years. No fadism in the pages of this excellent tome - just cold, hard, and well researched facts about a subject that is now more popular than when this book was first published in 1950.

This is a wonderful book for anyone that wants to make sense of what has been going on for long around the world. Great research book.

Oh, people! I'm about halfway through this book, and while the content is interesting, this edition of the book itself is an embarrassment. Every possible example of bad publishing is here, from no reference to the original date of publication (in fact, there is no copyright or publishing information at all), to misspellings, no or incorrect punctuation, wild margins and paragraph indentations, first letters of new sentences not it caps and the like. It makes it nearly unreadable. This is a topic that already lacks credibility, and when you publish a book that represents a classic piece of UFO literature in this amateurish form, it further degrades any evidence it has to offer. Bad, bad publishers!!!! Where are your proofreaders?! Where is your professional pride?!!!!! Amazon, my dependable friends, please take a look at this horror and remove this book from your offerings until the publishers clean up their act!

Donald Keyhoe (1897-1988) is one of the most prominent figures in the early history and development of the UFO phenomenon in the United States. A reporter by trade, Keyhoe traveled with famed aviator Charles Lindbergh after he returned to the USA from his historic 1927 flight across the Atlantic; he wrote a bestselling book about his travels with Lindbergh. He also served in the Marine Corps and rose to the rank of Major. In 1949, in the wake of the first widely-publicized UFO sightings and incidents in the USA, "True" magazine, a respected publication at the time, hired Keyhoe to write an article about the UFO mystery. After talking with his extensive contacts in the U.S. government and military gained from his years as a reporter and military officer, Keyhoe came to the conclusion that the UFO phenomenon was real, that the "flying saucers" were alien spaceships exploring the Earth, and that the U.S. government knew this and were covering up the true story to prevent panic. In January 1950 "True" published Keyhoe's article. Entitled "The Flying Saucers Are Real", it created a media sensation. UFO historian Curtis Peebles described the article as one of "the most widely read and discussed magazine articles up to that time." The fact that someone of Keyhoe's credibility and government contacts had published such an article gave the UFO phenomenon credibility in the minds of many people. In June 1950 Keyhoe expanded the article into a book. Also entitled "The Flying Saucers Are Real", the book sold over 500,000 copies and helped to establish many of the ideas and beliefs of the modern UFO phenomenon. Among the ideas Keyhoe helped develop were the notion that UFOs were spacecraft from an advanced alien civilization, that the aliens were simply exploring the Earth, and that the U.S. government knew this but was covering up the truth. Keyhoe's insistence that there was a vast government conspiracy regarding UFOs would set a pattern that continues to motivate UFO "believers" even today. "The Flying Saucers Are Real" would establish Keyhoe as a leading figure in the UFO phenomenon, and over the next two decades he would be frequently interviewed on television and radio. In 1957 he became the leader of NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), the largest and most influential civilian UFO research group of the 1950's and 60's. He remained NICAP's leader until 1969.

If you are a UFO buff then this book is highly recommended. Keyhoe examines the most prominent UFO cases up to 1950 - the Kenneth Arnold sighting, the Mantell Crash, the Chiles-Whitted UFO sighting, and numerous others - and offers his views on the subject. A number of UFO skeptics, such as Curtis Peebles, have criticized the book for greatly exaggerating the government's interest in UFOs, and for exaggerating the evidence indicating that UFOs were alien spacecraft and not merely hoaxes, misidentifications of natural phenomena, etc. Peebles also criticizes Keyhoe for imagining, fantasizing, and writing about a government conspiracy to cover-up UFO incidents rather than basing his assumptions of a conspiracy on solid facts. However, given the book's importance in the history of UFOs in the United States, it is still well worth reading even today. Recommended!

I had a copy of this book when I was young.I wanted to replace it.it's a good read.

I read a lot of books on UFO's and it gets hard to find new information but this book offers up new data I have not seen anywhere else. The author is a pilot with a lot of experience studying UFO's and there is a lot to like here. The book goes into detail about pilots flying side by side with UFO's and what they saw and experienced. We have exhaust descriptions, mph, etc. I enjoyed this book so much I read it in one evening. I highly recommend this book.

Susan Fenwick (avid UFO fan)

Good solid reporting on a very sensitive subject from the early days of the UFO phenomena.

This, Donald Keyhoe's first book originally published in 1950, was written whilst he was still a serving officer in the US Marine Corps (with the rank of Major) and had an office inside The Pentagon.

Keyhoe had access to original UFO sighting reports from military pilots in the late 1940s when the whole issue was more open and before the information clampdown became really effective. His conclusion that the UFOs represented some non-human and probably interplanetary technology was sound and reasoned against the weight and nature of the evidence - though interestingly in 1950, Venus and Mars were thought to be the likely source of visitation, as the current level of understanding of physics was simply insufficient to support the idea of interstellar (let alone "inter-dimensional") travel. The book contains a large number of meticulously documented and really astounding sighting and contact reports, mainly from aircraft crews both civil and military. The writing style is straightforward and sticks to the facts, and yet at the same time racy and interesting.

Keyhoe was one of the greatest researchers in the history of the UFO phenomenon, and a tireless and persistent campaigner for the Air Force and the early INTELS to be more open with the public about the subject. This book deserves the accolade of a true classic, an over-used word which in this particular case is fully justified.

It looks like this book was printed by cutting and pasting an electronic text into a book printing machine without proofreading it first. There are line breaks and footnotes all over the place where they don't belong. Anyone leafing through the first ten pages of the book would have noticed it. This book is junk.