Vernon, in his debut, tells how his boyhood sighting of a “flying saucer” over his neighbor’s house led him on a lifelong quest into UFO encounters and shadowy government scheming.
The author provides a big-picture exegesis of UFO conspiracy theories, while weaving in his own personal story about being a reluctant “contactee.” A science (and science-fiction) buff as a youngster, he was stunned when one night in 1968, he saw a flying saucer up-close from his bedroom window—an uncanny thing, hovering over a nearby yard. Vernon then delved into ufology, and over the years, his everyday life took some twisted turns. For example, his work mate at a Florida psychic phone line diagnosed him as being a victim of secret, regular alien monitoring and experiments since his early childhood. At this point, Vernon shifts the focus away from the story of himself, setting aside an intriguing subtheme about his dawning realization of his sexuality. Instead, the book turns to the alarmist notions of would-be E.T.-hunters and whistle-blowers in the X-Files-ish ufology subculture. It supports a sinister thesis of terrestrial governments having “sold out” the human race to dissection-happy space creatures, in exchange for access to flying-disc technology (later tested at Area 51). The author helpfully evaluates books, videos and interviews with late-night paranormal-radio luminaries such as Stanton Friedman, Communion author Whitley Strieber, Linda Moulton Howe and famed, alleged abductee Travis Walton, usually approvingly. Interestingly, however, the author doesn’t uphold every UFO conspiracy theory, instead praising “healthy skepticism,” which is perhaps why some popular UFO-lit concepts, such as Bigfoot and the Men in Black, are conspicuously absent. He also delivers engaging, snappish callouts against unbelievers (he describes the late Carl Sagan as a “cobra,” for example), the faceless elites behind the “cover-up,” and a dumbed-down, apathetic public. At its best, it’s evocative of iconoclastic sci-fi author Harlan Ellison at his snarkiest.
UFO conspiracy theories, delivered in red-alert tones by an atypical follower.Pub Date: April 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991433513
Page Count: 462
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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