Customer Reviews

Round in Circles: Poltergeists, Pranksters, and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers

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This book, which received rave reviews in England when it was first published by Penguin (and later got a plug from Carl Sagan), is about the crop circles PEOPLE even more than it is about the crop circles themselves. It is a compelling, funny, and ultimately touching portrait of human beings entranced by a genuine modern mystery.

Round in Circles is unique among its cousins in the paranormal bookshelf. It isn't a gushing, poorly written, mystic-centered account of crop circles. Nor is it a more-rational-than-thou attack on alien-mongers. Instead, Schnabel shines a light on the people lurking in the shadows of the crop-circle story: the crop-circle experts. Some are well known in UFOlogy and the paranormal. Most though made their names with the advent of crop circles. And, as the story unfolds, it is where the tragedy and humour lies. Schnabel makes it blatantly clear by the end of the book that the crop - circles are quite simply (and simple) hoaxes. Schnabel even tracks down the hoaxers themselves (and they are many). He learns the secrets - which are neither particularly ingenious nor technical. Before he himself realizes it, Schnabel becomes hopelessly addicted to crop circle creating itself. The reporter becomes a part of his own story. And a funny story it is too. Lots of laugh out loud bit! s. Much grinning by the reader.

Good book, but it doesn't explain a lot of things. After reading it, I felt as if the author somehow missed the whole point. I know for a fact that many crop circles actually are man-made, but with fabricated crop circles, the maize gets broken in the process. With real crop circles (the phenomenon that hasn't really been totally explained yet) the maize is left bent to the ground but unbroken and the area is 'charged' (cell phones won't get reception inside them, electronic devices set on the ground no longer function, people feel tingling sensations while inside). The book was well written and the stories of the hoaxers were funny, but when I picked this book up, I was hoping to find an explanation for the real crop circles.

This was a surprisingly absorbing book, and impressively detailed and well-written, especially given that the author (judging by the photos) was pretty young when he wrote it. For those looking (as I was) for a detailed explanation of the confessed crop-circle hoaxers, this book does NOT focus on that. The infamous hoax "revelations" of Doug and Dave don't come until almost the end of the book -- page 260. What we get is a candid and impressively deadpan, nonjudgmental or ridiculing look at the earnest eccentrics that have led the study of crop circles. Mildly curious about the phenomenon and the controvery about the possible sources and meanings of crop circles, I found this book FAR more engaging--I could hardly put it down-than the many books purporting to explain or defend their meaning.

This is not only a great, unique true story in its own right, but a classic case study in how people, even "scientists," can delude themselves. I must say, even before hearing of the book, I employed Occam's Razor and thought, "What's the most likely way that crop circles could be formed? What more could it take than two guys, one holding the end of a piece of cord, the other walking around, dragging a heavy plank?" Sure enough, that's almost exactly how it was done. And the two guys spawned a whole industry of crop circle fans, competing to see who could come up with the most wacky, arcane theories of alien visitations and bizarre whirlwinds.
If you have friends who believe in alien abductions and other paranormal claptrap (and who doesn't know someone like that?), you need this piece of ammunition on your shelf.

This pretty much destroys any further claims that crop circles are made by anything other than human beings. Well, the wind vorticies are still possible for some of the simple circles, but aliens they are not.

It's also interesting to note how desperate, and sometimes violent, people become when defending their beliefs that have been proven false. I guess it's just the human condition.

This book is perfect for those easily fooled into thinking these complex works of art are the work of a couple of english dunces with planks of wood. Anyone who has delved into this subject knows that most(there are most likely some hoaxes)of these circles could not possibly be the work of humans as we know them.The amazing complexity of the circles denies this conclusion.It's obvious the 'reviewers' here are hopelessly locked in the dark ages just as those who refused to believe in the round earth theory or the solar centric theory 500 years ago.Instead of this horrible propaganda for the 'hoax' agenda which those here have obviously swallowed like sheep I highly recommend William Gazeckis well researched dvd Crop Circles Quest For Truth an intelligent and scientific(yes scientific!)doco on this most intriquing of modern day mysteries.

I was quite surprised to see this early 1993 book cited by other workers, as some kind of "evidence" concerning modern crop pictures. Way back in the year 1993, it may have been entertaining. Yet for the year 2009, when 100 to 1000 times more is known concerning those strange field pictures, it seems utterly ridiculous!
If you want to learn something about modern crop pictures, first you need to find a book written from 2008 onward, because that subject has evolved so much over the past few years.
Next you need to find an author who has studied most of them in close detail, or preferably firsthand: for example Lucy Pringle, Janet Ossebaard or Eltjo Haseloff.
Or you can go for a very recent movie such as "What on Earth?" (2009) by Suzanne Taylor.
But this book, and others like it which attribute the majority of modern crop pictures to "pranksters", is not even wrong. It just seems ridiculous. Tens of thousands of people have witnessed the formation, or near-formation of those pictures in the years 1994-2009, and would testify otherwise. In other words, they have been captured while forming on film, or in front of TV crews, and no humans were present in the fields below. The typical origin for such pictures must therefore lie outside of the normal realm of commonsense reality, or "paranormal", however else they will eventually be explained in detail.