Little Gray Men: Roswell and the Rise of a Popular Culture (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

The chapters of the book are intriguing side trips into various aspects of Roswells culture. . . . "Little Gray Men" Ýis a delightful romp through the alleyways of society and culture, grappling with the fascinating question of how a quiet, conservative rural town has become Ground Zero in humanitys quest for neighbors out there.

Product Description

More than half of all Americans believe UFOs and aliens exist. How did extraterrestrials come to be so real for so many? Toby Smith tracks down our fascination with extraterrestrials, showing how Roswell became the fiber out of which all flying saucer and alien stories were woven in science fiction films and television programs, especially in the late 1940s and the 1950s. It all began outside Roswell on a July night in 1947. A nearby military bases official announcement of the recovery of a crashed flying saucer went out to radio stations and newspapers nationwideincluding The New York Times. The militarys quick retraction came too late. The government had already said extraterrestrials existed.

Today visitors are taken to the crash site in a vehicle with license plates reading Believe. And believe people do. But why? Statements of belief in extraterrestrials from such diverse and noteworthy people as General Douglas MacArthur, Carl Jung, and Elvis Presley firmly fixed the place of aliens in modern American culture.

Smith not only examines movies and the media to understand the prominence of aliens in our contemporary culture, he also shows how New Mexico and Wright Field in Ohio, where the bodies of the aliens were reportedly taken, remain particularly fertile spawning grounds for UFO stories. Once extraterrestrial visitors landed (or didnt land) in Roswell, the notion were not alone in the universe quickly became part of American popular culture.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 199 pages
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press; 1st edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826321216
• ISBN-13: 978-0826321213
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,098,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ros-well Done, July 18, 2002

By	Os Davis (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews

Believe, baby. Believe that the key event in all history happened on July 4 (or maybe July 5; sources disagree), 1947, and that most homo sapiens still don't know about it. Screaming from night skies outside of Roswell fell ... something. A UFO, stated an early radio report, man's first contact with extra-terrestrials. And our own government has stashed the bodies, deduced Those Who Believe.

So began Roswell's auspicious ascent to synonymy with a UFO obsession that would color conspiracies and entertainment for the remainder of the century. From the so-called Roswell Incident, too, Toby Smith's Little Gray Men takes off (hee hee) on a frequently funny pastiche of New Mexico's oddest socio-phenomenon.

Smith displays a Roswell known and unknown -- how many of the attendees at 50th Anniversary bash Encounter '97 had ever heard of formerly neighboring town Blackdom? -- on his tour through a pop culture mecca's half-century. Personalities haunt these pages with rocketeer Robert Goddard, sci-fi scribe Jack Williamson and golfer Nancy Lopez rubbing shoulders with nonplussed, bumper sticker-hawking locals. And even Governor "Toke" Johnson makes a cameo to state he knows what happened, but ain't tellin'.

Mr. Smith amuses throughout, admirably tracing public consciousness of Roswell from New Yorker cartoons to incessant "X-Files" subplots (subtract a few points, though, for omitting mention of a certain Chevy Malibu in the classic flick Repo Man). Over-embellishment is sometimes problematic, but wackiness definitely predominates.

And the Incident? That's easy: experimental military technology; nothing more, nothing less. Obviously.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rushton is Wrong, July 22, 2002

By	Konrad McCoy (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

I'm afraid Teddy Rushton is a little misleading with his review. He either doesn't read much, saying this was one of the most disappointing books he's read, or the author ran over his dog. I don't get it. To say that this book was pasted from internet information is absurd. This book is original from beginning to end. Little Gray Men isn't a history lesson about the Roswell incident, it is a look at the Alien culture that came after the supposed landing. I don't think Rushton got it. I'm not sure what Rushton has against New Mexico either. I've been there as well and think it is a very pretty state. I wasn't robbled or held up. Did he get a hangnail, a nosebleed? We don't know, but his personal attact on this author is not justified nor is the grade he gives this book. I found Little Gray Men comical and highly entertaining. Smith's look at the pop culture that has been created from the alien invasion of America is observant. I'd like to know when Rushton will be back in New Mexico, so I can meet him there and show him to a bookstore.

2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A dull gray book, July 4, 2000

By	Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is one of the most disappointing books I have read in years; Smith's problem seems to be that he was fascinated by space movies as a 10-year-old and has never gotten beyond that stage.

The book reads as if it was a cut-and-paste Internet collection of everything imaginable that might relate to the so-called "Roswell Incident" -- supposedly the crash of a flying saucer near Roswell in 1947 -- compiled with a studious avoidance of anything serious, plus at least an occasional inexactitude with facts. One of the simplest facts he ignores is the US Air Force funding of "flying saucer" research in the 1950's; think of it, a 199-page book that totally ignores the only known research done on the feasibility of building and flying a genuine flying saucer.

Let's face it. New Mexico is one of the poorest states (I lived there off and on since 1967, as recently as 1996), with some of the lowest education standards in the nation. Albuquerque, where Smith is based, has one of the nation's highest crime rates -- the city has declined precipitously since the 1960's. You don't see states at the top of the economic and social scale claiming to see "flying saucers" that are driven by kind-hearted ambassadors who will rescue us earthlings from our folly. Like the `cargo cults' in the South Pacific after World War II, such miraculous interventions are the product of a superstitious culture without much hope for improvement.

Roswell is in "Little Texas," not quite in the oil-patch but close enough to be infected. Except for the political boundary, it's more Texas in attitude than New Mexico. Smith misses this primary element of the Roswell area, and in general ignores the mystical "New Age" atmosphere of New Mexico. It's his major fault -- the book doesn't have a specific focus. It wanders from topic to topic like a bored TV viewer with 500 channels to watch, never stopping long enough to understand anything.

It's a shame. Smith tackled one of the most interesting situations in New Mexico, and turned it into utter boredom. Roswell, the `little gray men," flying saucers and the nature of government coverups deserve much better.