Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Book)

While the UFO phenomenon has died down in recent years, after all the publicity that The X-Files and shows of the sort generated for the forward thinking analytical scientist in us all, books of this sort are now a little easier to come by. This book is probably one of the best reads in my small collection of UFO and metaphysics books, and takes a very good and not too sceptical point of view on the whole UFO craze that began sweeping not only the United States, but the entire world in the late 1940's, and early 50's. Aimed to be more of a round up of gathered information, it is as we travel deeper into the book however that we begin to find that as the years went by on Project Blue Book, they devised new techniques to help prove whether these Flying Saucers were real or not. The only down side to the whole book in my opinion is the authors views and beliefs on whether or not he believes UFO's exist, which is presented in the last couple pages of this otherwise phenomenal book. Honestly, its almost like someone else wrote the last chapter, as Ruppelt has such an open mind throughout the whole project, but after having the project pretty much disbanded from his authority he takes an about face stance on the subject, which some might wonder was either his way to either confuse the leader, or make them think for themselves about the possibilites of what could actually be out there. By presenting us with all the useful information that they could possibly fit into this small but concise book, we are taken to all parts of the globe, but mostly throughout the United States, as the government seems to be trying to find the needle in the haystack awnser for just what in the hell is causing all of these bizarre occurences in our skys. Though the book is extremely old, and modern UFO books might be better (I'm not sure most of the UFO books I have are particularly old) no book I have cme across, has stated the facts for what they are and let the reader decipher for himself or herself on their point of view on the subject afterwards. An excellent read, that really expands your mind to look at all the possibilities out there.

Edward J. Ruppelt is no run of the mill UFO author. Ruppelt was the first 'chief' of the USAF Project Blue Book. Upon leaving that post and the service, he wrote this book telling the world what he and the USAF really thought about, and how they handled, the UFO phenomena. Ruppelt is the person who coined the phrase 'Unidentified Flying Object' (UFO) to filter out the negative and demeaning connotations that were associated with the term 'flying saucers.' This is a serious look at the UFO question in the early days from a man at the very center of the UFO investigations by the US military. I'm really surprised that I am the first to write a review for this most important and historic book.

Writing a Amazon book review of a book on this subject is a little strange for me. I do not generally do it for what I read for pleasure because I do it as much as I do as academic librarian. The subject of UFOs is not something many of my students write papers on because there is very few academic journals that want to give the subject a fair hearing. Since I have studied the subject for several years and know a number of folks in the subject area here it goes. My interest in the subject goes back to the 1973 when I had a pleasure to meet the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek on a book tour. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Rupert is an honest and detailed look at the origial Project Blue Book and how how he set up and tried to honestly study the UFO subject dispite the efforts of the U.S. Air Force to coverup the subject. His tranformation from a UFO skeptic to a believer follows what Dr. Hynek later told of his tranformation about UFOs to Congress in 1969 and later to those on us on his book tours. The book is a good book to read on this subject.

This is one of the classic works on the subject of ufos. Simply a must-have for anyone interested in the subject. However, be advised that there are two editions of the book and Amazon has been switching out different publications that vary between those two editions. I got involved in a discussion (in the comments section of one of the reviews) since purchasing so I've seen three different versions (by different publishers) so far. The first edition has 17 chapters. The second, 20. There are rumors about Ruppelt (the author) being pressured into adding the new chapters to lighten the mood of the book by including some of the sillier aspects of the subject. He died shortly after publication of the second edition, fueling further rumors of conspiracy to keep the subject from being taken seriously.