Out There: Out There [Paperback]

Blum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1991

An account of the US government's decision to summon 17 of the nations intelligence specialists to a top secret meeting in the Pentagon in an attempt to solve the mystery of whether the human race is alone in the universe. Blum also wrote " Wanted! The Search for Nazis in America".

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Written neither by a zealot nor a rabid debunker but a former New York Times reporter, Out There traces the actions of the Defense Intelligence Agency's UFO Working Group, charged with the mission to determine whether human life is truly alone in the universe. Triggered by a tip from an American spymaster in 1987 while researching his I Pledge Allegiance ... The True Story Of The Walkers: An American Spy Family, this work of journalism uncovers decades of government duplicity regarding its investigations of reported extraterrestrial visits. With 212 interviews and some 200 published sources, author Howard Blum's earnest reporting is a gripping and credible documentation of his journey from skepticism to belief.

From Publishers Weekly

Blum ( I Pledge Allegiance ) here offers a curious amalgam of science and apparent science fiction, ranging in subject from the bona fide quests of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) astrophysicists and radio astronomers to unverified reports of UFO sightings and the barmy project of a tiny Wisconsin town to build a landing site for flying saucers. But what is most arresting about his study is Blum's claim that the U.S. government has been gathering information about UFOs since 1947, with one or two hiatuses--and has kept these investigations secret. The culprits seem to be top military men, portrayed here as paranoid children, and members of our various spy operations. The book should cause a stir among readers kept far too long in the dark. First serial to Penthouse; TV rights to ABC; Preferred Choice Book Plan main selection.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pocket (October 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671662619
• ISBN-13: 978-0671662615
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,711,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Having started out my career as a reporter for the NY Times, I've moved on to being an author. And while I'm still writing non-fiction, I'm now more focused in writing books that are driven by characters and a sustained narrative. I live in Connecticut and am the father of 3 teenagers - one in college, one starting next year, and one still struggling through high school geometry. My tenth book will be published by Crown/Random House April 26. It's entitled THE FLOOR OF HEAVEN and its a true story about a cowboy turned Pinkerton detective who goes off to the Yukon Gold Rush to pursue a puzzling and suspenseful case. Twentieth Century Fox just bought the film rights, and I find the prospect of a movie based on the book to be exciting - as do the bursars at the colleges attended by my kids.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars the swiss cheese school of investigative reporting, April 4, 2007

By 

Richard Thieme (Milwaukee WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Out There: Out There (Paperback)

There are many more holes here than substance. The book depicts the author's journey, including a number of meetings with anonymous sources that lead to nothing newsworthy, and is not a coherent well-researched account of UFO phenomena or its many subsets (black budget research, disinformation deception and cover stories for classified research, aerospace technologies, immense amounts of UFO data from the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies, research into metamaterials, nanotechnology and cloaking technologies, the psychology sociology and spirituality of UFO investigation and reporting, etc, etc.) so the reader who does not have a broad understanding of the field and its several subcultures will be left more confused and uninformed than when s/he began the book. I understand the publishing pressures to bring such an incomplete account into print and sell the TV and movie rights, in the hope that an X-files-like narrative may result, but the book does not even lend itself to that. Suggestions of conspiracy are light and fluffy, despite the evidence in the book itself for disinformation and intentional confusion on a meaningful scale - and for good reasons. This book shows why a domain that is nine tenths under the water lends itself to just about anybody and everybody saying anything and everything. The bad thing about that is that it might suggest to the uninformed that there is nothing worth investigating. These few dots are not connected to each other or to the many other dots that might suggest plausible and meaningful patterns - patterns that are not simply imposed on the data but are sugested by it as hypotheses worth exploring.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Truth is "Out There", February 15, 2011

By 

Michael P. Lefand (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials (Hardcover)

Although "Out There" by Howard Blum is dated, published in 1990, I think it is worth reading even now in 2011 for those who have an interest in the labyrinth of confusion in regards to the subject of UFO's and the search for extraterrestrials. As an investigative reporter and author of other best selling nonfiction books Blum has taken on a subject where it is highly difficult to prove anything on this subject. Blum investigates layers of cover up, misinformation, and dead ends in his quest to obtain facts from government agencies that have been and still are cloaked in the mystique of claiming "National Security." In this day and age it has become even more difficult to believe everything the government tells us. So what does "Out There" contribute to the public that reads it? It makes one reflect on all the past misinformation on all subjects we have been fed over the past decades that is only now surfacing. Blum does a good job in explaining the beginnings of the SETI program, the Drake Equation, and the Dolphin Group. I leave it to the reader to decide on his report on the "Working Group."

What originally sparked my interest in this subject was while visiting New Mexico I visited the UFO Museum in Roswell and saw a blowup of the famous photo of Brigadier General Roger M. Raney and Colonel Thomas J. Dubose with the supposed wreckage of the weather balloon. General Ramey is holding a piece of paper in his left hand, a memo with its wording facing partly towards the camera. With technology today the wording is partly decipherable and the words "The victims of the wreck" and "in the "disc" they will ship" plainly appear. This information does not appear in Blum's book because at the time computer enhancing technology was not at its present level. However, it helps support many of the contention that we are being deceived and lied to by our government.

I recommend the book but with only 4 stars. Again it is dated, but perhaps much that he writes about will someday be exposed. The reason for 4 stars is because Blum does little speculation and appears to have been truthful in his investigation while trying to penetrate the secrecy that surrounds the UFO subject in regards to the government. I look forward to the day when the Truth, one way or another is revealed.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars His facts are wrong, August 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Out There: Out There (Paperback)

The opening of the book concerns NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Complex. I worked there for years and have had the opportunity to look into every nook and cranny. The Author's facts about the Mountain concerning elevators and Box 9 etc, are absolutely wrong. If he really did have a source for these facts, he was steered off the factual road and didn't follow up. It brings the entire book into question.