Customer Reviews

The Ufo Controversy in America

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Most UFO books tend to be written by "pro-UFO" believers who focus on the wilder aspects of the phenomenon (alien abductions, government coverups, etc.), or by so-called "skeptics" who are often more interested in ridiculing obviously flawed UFO sightings and witnesses than in honestly trying to solve the more baffling cases. Furthermore, few UFO books try to focus on the phenomenon as an historical or social event in American history, and as a result the UFO phenomenon often comes across as a disjointed and disconnected series of sightings, abductions, and bizarre events. David Jacobs, currently a professor of history at Temple University, attempted to correct these mistakes in 1975 when he wrote "The UFO Controversy in America". This book, which has become a valuable research tool for both believers and skeptics alike, is by far one of the best books ever written on the UFO phenomenon. This is NOT a poorly-researched, "wild-eyed" book done by a UFO "believer", nor is it a "hatchet-job" done by an obvious debunker. Instead, it is a well-written, well-researched, and largely fair-minded look at UFO's as an historical phenomenon. Dr. Jacobs begins by looking at how the UFO phenomenon started in June 1947 with the well-publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold of nine "flying saucers" flying in formation near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. He goes on to describe how the US Air Force and military became interested in UFO's and he gives a detailed account of the Air Force's top-secret investigations into the UFO "problem", which began with Project Sign in 1947, and then went through Project Grudge from 1949-1952 and Project Blue Book from 1952-1969. He gives an excellent account of the controversial "Condon Committee", which was a government-funded UFO research project at the University of Colorado in the late sixties. Although both UFO believers and skeptics started out with high hopes that the project would provide a "solution" to the UFO mystery, it quickly became bogged down in a nasty feud between those scientists and researchers who took UFO's seriously, and those who did not - including the project's leaders, Dr. Edward Condon and his top assistant, Robert Low. When Dr. Condon made several public remarks ridiculing UFO witnesses and it was discovered that Low had written a letter detailing how the Condon committee would pretend publicly to be "unbiased" about UFO's while it actually was "anti-UFO" in private, several of the committee's "pro-UFO" members quit in disgust and became openly critical of the project's leadership. In fact, the "Condon Report" (published in 1969), couldn't find explanations for one-third of the sightings it examined, yet Condon in his introduction to the report flatly stated that UFO's didn't exist and that science had nothing to gain from taking the phenomenon seriously. He thereafter became a fierce opponent of any attempt to treat UFO's seriously, and even tried to shut down a symposium on UFO's sponsored in 1969 by the prestigious American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Jacobs also offers a full account of almost every major UFO sighting from the Arnold incident in 1947 through the 1973 UFO "wave" (which was the last well-publicized series of sightings in US history). Unlike most books on UFO's, Jacobs attempts to be even-handed in his analysis of the subject, and he is critical of both the believers and debunkers at times. The one feature of this book which may surprise some people is that it ignores the famed "Roswell" UFO case, in which a UFO supposedly crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. In fact, the Roswell case was virtually unknown until the 1980's, and it was the Kenneth Arnold sighting, and not Roswell, which brought UFO's into the spotlight. If you're interested in reading a scholarly, well-researched and well-written history of the UFO phenomenon - the sightings, government investigations, and the people who make up both sides of this mystery - then David Jacob's book is one of the best that's been published. My only complaint is that it ends in the mid-1970's - I wish that Dr. Jacobs would give us an updated version soon. Highly recommended!

Jacobs, a university professor, surveyed American UFO history as it stood in 1974. He began with the events of 1896 and 1897, providing a useful perspective on UFO sightings as a recurrent phenomenon. Jacobs gave particularly close attention to U.S. Air Force investigations of UFO's up to 1969, describing the clash between those who wanted to dismiss the importance of this subject and those who wanted to make it a national priority. He also described the now generally discredited contactees of the 1950's, citizens UFO groups such as NICAP, Congressional hearings, and the infamous Condon Committee Report. Much of the debate involved skeptics and advocates attacking each other's credibility. Jacobs concluded that identification of credible sightings remained the heart of the issue. Jacobs, who clearly surveyed a huge volume of material, was generally even-handed in his coverage. The book included a forward by the late J. Allen Hynek, but very few illustrations - nine black and white photographs.

While this study remains a basic document, it now is dated. An equally scholarly treatment of the history of this phenomenon since 1974 is long overdue. Hopefully, such a study will be more thoroughly illustrated.

In a field with more than its fair share of unsubstantiated claims and fantasists it is rare to find a sound, impartial and thorough academic work on the subject of UFOs which has stood the test of time.

"The Unidentified Flying Objects Controversy in America" was David Jacobs' doctoral thesis written in 1974-75 and later expanded for publication as this book by Indiana University Press. It is unusual to find a comprehensive examination of the UFO phenomenon written by an academic historian using the relevant methodology, which does not stray into speculation but sticks to facts: official reports, press reports, government actions, public advocacy, documents, records, testimony. As academic history it's hard to fault and has probably never been equalled as an examination of the UFO phenomenon and the way it was managed by the government, military, intelligence services and mass media in the USA up to 1975.

The copy reviewed here is the second hardback edition published in 1975 containing a few minor revisions (the first edition, to the publisher's delight, sold out - unusual public interest for an academic study). The book was also published as a paperback, but has been out of print now for many years. It's worth buying a good hardback edition if you can find one, either the first or second printing.

Starting with the still unexplained and anomalous "airship" sightings in 1896 and 1897, widely reported in the press at that time, Dr. Jacobs moves on through the 20th century, examining in turn the various phases the phenomenon went through - often defined as much by the strategy of the government and their agencies in managing the problem as by the manifestation of sightings and reports. Above all, there has always been a controversy, and considerable resources appear to have been devoted to managing it. The late 1940s, the 1952 wave, the Robertson Panel, the early contactees and their claims, the rise of NICAP and the battle for congressional hearings, the Hynek/McDonald/Menzel confrontations of the 1960s, Blue Book, the Condon Committee and its aftermath are all examined in enlightening and refreshingly non-partisan detail.

Dr. Jacobs' concluding chapter, "1973: Echoes of the Past" gives the reader a good contemporary view of the way the subject of unidentified flying objects was managed in the USA by the media including the national press, far more important then as an opinion-former than in our current internet age, and in the emerging mass media age of television. Although the Hill case had by then emerged into the public eye and was being examined on national TV by journalist/writer John Fuller (related in the book by Jacobs), there was at that time little knowledge about the alien abduction phenomenon and the level of public and academic discourse about the UFO issue in general had not really moved on since the mid-1950s.

Jacobs' detailed and impartial examination of all the main players in the controversy during this period is everything you might expect from top-level academia. He is as fair-minded as possible and betrays no bias, whether dealing with debunkers like Klass and Menzel or with the more outrageous claims of the "space brothers are coming to save us" contactees.

The book concludes with 36 pages of referenced notes, a bibliography of more than 200 other books and papers and a good index.

For the interested reader, it was the respect from academia for this work which led to the "UFOs in American Society" course being instigated by the History Faculty under the tutorship of Professor Jacobs at Temple University in Philadelphia. It also led by a long route to Jacobs eventually being invited to investigate the abduction phenomenon, his pioneering work on which has proved to be controversial with debunkers and sceptics but nevertheless respected by academia for its methodology and cautious hypotheses.

All Professor Jacobs' books have been granted academic credits by the University authorities, and maybe it's time for an updated "UFO Controversy in America" for the 21st century to put alongside the works of other non-tenured (and perhaps slightly less free from speculation) historians like Richard Dolan?

Having heard of this book for years and having read The Threat,I decided to buy it. I was not disappointed. Keeping in mind it was published in 1975 it is very reasoned account of the early history of UFO sightings. There is reasonable account of the rise and fall of NICAP and the Robertson Panel as well as the Condon Report. As I had read all about these committees from other sources, it appears Jacobs adapts an historian's tone, not that of either a believer or debunker. I did not feel that he was prosteltyzing one way or another. The book makes a good companion to Richard Dolan's UFO's and the National Security State. Each complements the other and presents the case that more needs to be done in this field. Some later writers are indebted to Jacobs for having shown the way.

I read Dr. Jacob's earlier books on alien abductions - a thesis which I don't quite buy into although his research on this seems much better than Dr. Macks and others' were/are - and decided to read this present but much earlier tome of his on this subject.

The book is exactly as presented, a study of the 'controversy' on UFOs in America and not really directly about UFOs per se. I found the author to be very serious and objective on all aspects of this, presenting his material without sensationalism or indulging in rumors and gossip so unfortunately rife in this field.

His information overall presents a very, very strong case for the American govt. consistently and not overly convincingly misleading its own populace from the 1940s right through into the 1970s (the publication period of this work), especially with regard to the USAF's identification process and public relations priorities. It also seems clear that 'secret aircraft projects' and 'national security', while accounting for =some= or even =many= sightings, provide only little explanatory power for the overall phenomenon. The majority remain a solid and enduring mystery.

There is no information in this book on the Roswell issues, i.e. crashed saucers and their retrieval, or reverse engineering of technologies recovered, if any, and indeed if any of the crashes really did occur - although Kevin Randle's updated book on that subject is fairly compelling that they DID occur.

Keyhoe comes off fairly well, the 'contactees' very badly, and the USAF and US Govt. almost as badly. Jacob's review of all the personalities and their works is first-rate.

I would like to see him do a second volume on the same subject, covering the thirty or so years since this book first came out. That would surely shake things up a bit as well as clear up a fair amount of nonsense.