Customer Reviews

Hypnotizing Crop Circle Shapes

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

 

 

This magnificent book takes you on a journey through "crop circle world", a complete and unique world of its own. It has been excitingly and passionately written. It holds your attention, even if you are not into geometry! The best thing about it is the author's conclusions, that he dares to draw through his decade of work on these miraculous designs. His conclusions change your view on this world, on reality itself. No other author has ever discovered what Bert Janssen discovered, and no one has ever had the guts to write it all down and share it with the world! Absolutely highly recommended!!!

I actually wanted to give this book 3.5 stars, for reasons you'll see below, but the facts are simple.

1) This is a very short book. The Appendix begins on page 117.

2) The book's one saving grace is the author's interesting analysis of the geometry of the circles. It's quite satisfying to see a diagram starting from scratch, with the addition of a circle here, a pentagon there, a circle here, etc. ending up with a complete replication of the crop circle under discussion.

3) Aside from the geometrical analysis (which I found compelling), the remainder of the book is little more than a brief diary of a few visits of the Dutch author to a few well-known circles.

4) For padding, there's a nice six-page spread of color photographs, with absolutely no analysis.

I love that the author took the time to do some geometry to figure out how to recreate some of the more famous circles, and for that I give this book kudos. The rest of the book is not very interesting, though, and I've read many other clearly superior books. For one, it seems like the book was self-published and in need of a professional editor. It almost seems like the author had some good ideas and diagrams, presented them and explained them, then completely ran out of time and/or steam toward the end. The final 30 pages are mostly throwaway references to photographs of circles.

I recommend "The New Circlemakers" and "The Gift" instead.

The book shows how the external geometry of the crop circles is formed from the internal geometry, and how one element of a crop circle determines the rest of the formation. (Trust me, the math here is not overwhelming.) The author does this through the "construction technique" method, re-constructing the formations through basic geometry, and building on a basic pattern. The appendix covers the geometry going from two-fold to nine-fold geometry.

The author is a bit over dramatic at times, but the complexity of crop circles, not limited to their mathematics, is exciting. When someone like Bert Janssen does find a link between these formations, it's got to be major accomplishment. The book also has some great glossy photos of crop circles.

Definitely a book worth having.