Rick Hunter
Celestial
When you don't hear from me for awhile, it usually means I am spending my Ufology time reading. Just finished Ben Mezrich's The 37thvParallel: The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway and really enjoyed it. A word of caution: I am unfamiliar with Mezrich and the main character of the book Chuck Zukowski so my comments pertain only to the book itself, not the credibility of either man.
This book is, for the most part, the story of Zukowski immersing himself in Ufology and gradually excluding almost everything else. There isn't a huge amount of new UFO incident reporting here, other than one flap in Kansas that evidently drew a fair amount of law enforcement attention and some collateral MIB activity. Rather, it reads like a case study on the rewards and hazards of serious Ufology.
Zukowski and his family experience high strangeness of their own and speak to witnesses of the same. Zukowski himself finds a tantalizing scrap of material in the Roswell debris field, which laboratories cannot positively identify. The pursuit of UFOs also strains Zukowski's finances and marriage, it also causes him to lose his job as a part time deputy sheriff.
Towards the end of the book, Zukowski discovers that the 37th parallel across the USA is the "UFO Belt", a magnet for sightings, abductions, and animal mutilations. There isn't a huge amount of analysis about this finding though. The final page ends with a cryptic statement about what Zukowski came to understand about the phenomenon. Key words are conspicuously missing, much like redacted FOIA documents. So, I don't know if it is in fact a cryptic statement about UFOs or a literary device about the idea that the phenomenon can never be completely understood, it will always have some missing pieces, if you will.
This book is, for the most part, the story of Zukowski immersing himself in Ufology and gradually excluding almost everything else. There isn't a huge amount of new UFO incident reporting here, other than one flap in Kansas that evidently drew a fair amount of law enforcement attention and some collateral MIB activity. Rather, it reads like a case study on the rewards and hazards of serious Ufology.
Zukowski and his family experience high strangeness of their own and speak to witnesses of the same. Zukowski himself finds a tantalizing scrap of material in the Roswell debris field, which laboratories cannot positively identify. The pursuit of UFOs also strains Zukowski's finances and marriage, it also causes him to lose his job as a part time deputy sheriff.
Towards the end of the book, Zukowski discovers that the 37th parallel across the USA is the "UFO Belt", a magnet for sightings, abductions, and animal mutilations. There isn't a huge amount of analysis about this finding though. The final page ends with a cryptic statement about what Zukowski came to understand about the phenomenon. Key words are conspicuously missing, much like redacted FOIA documents. So, I don't know if it is in fact a cryptic statement about UFOs or a literary device about the idea that the phenomenon can never be completely understood, it will always have some missing pieces, if you will.
