UFOs and Government; A Historical Inquiry

San Antonio, TX: Anomalist Books, 2012. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. Very good. xii, 580, [4] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Name Index. Subject Index. UFO Event Index. Format is 8.5 inches by 11 inches. Forward by Jerome Clark. Governments have been concerned about UFO sighting reports since WWII, but historians have never made a concerted attempt to understand their often contradictory responses to the phenomenon. Whether it's a conspiracy or not, the subject has been marginalized to such an extent that it's as if the military never acted with alarm on the heels of a UFO sighting, as if the intelligence community never took up the issue behind closed doors, as if government research and development efforts never attempted to duplicate the phenomenon. But they have. So now a collection of veteran UFO historians and researchers have attempted to address this historical oversight with the publication of a new book entitled UFOs and Government, published by Anomalist Books. The authors have spent years researching thousands of government documents and archives in order to present a work of historical scholarship on the U.S. government's response to the UFO phenomenon. How and why the U.S. government-and other governments around the world-have dealt with the UFO phenomenon during most of a century is the focus of this historical inquiry. The remarkable story explains much that is new, or at least not commonly known, about the seriousness with which the military and intelligence communities approached the UFO problem. Though the book focuses primarily on the U.S. government's response to the UFO phenomenon also included is the treatment of the subject by the governments of Sweden, Australia, France, Spain, and other countries. The effort was headed by Michael Swords, a retired professor at Western Michigan University with an extensive knowledge of UFO history, and managed by Robert Powell, director of research at the Mutual UFO Network.