UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government’s Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There

This probing report by journalist Graff (Watergate) delves into the “incidents, sightings, and reported encounters that changed” how people think about UFOs. According to Graff, the legend that the government covered up the crash of an alien spaceship in Roswell, N.Mex., in 1947 started after a colonel with a reputation for being a “loose cannon” prematurely declared to the press that a pile of debris found there was the remains of a “flying saucer.” A colorful cast of scientists, military officials, cranks, and true believers populate Graff’s narrative, including conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper, who exaggerated his stint in the Navy to make believable his claims that the government was hiding evidence of UFOs, and astronomer Carl Sagan, whose advocacy helped turn the search for extraterrestrial life into a respectable scientific endeavor. Graff contends that though many examples of so-called alien spacecraft can be easily debunked (a flying saucer photographed by an occultist in 1950s was actually a sombrero tossed in the air), “there is almost certainly not one single answer to the mystery” of UFO sightings, which might be of “little-understood meteorological and atmospheric phenomena,” “military technologies,” or “a secret that will only emerge as our knowledge of astronomy and physics itself evolves.” The UFO history is loads of fun, and Graff’s agnosticism has the potential to appeal to skeptics and believers alike. It’s a fascinating dive down the rabbit hole. (Nov.)