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Project Blue Book
Looks at the history of UFO sightings, discusses the background of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, and shares some of the information gathered in the fifties and sixties
432 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 26, 2022
Ball Blue Book is a Better Book
In 1957, when I was in 8th grade, my teacher told us about project blue book. He made this subject seems so interesting that I wondered for years if we would ever get to see The truth about UFO's and see this book. I wish that he were still alive to See how things have changed over the years in regards to UFO's. But more so then that I wish he were alive so that I could tell him that he was the best teacher I ever had which includes my college professors. Just that Mister bailey talked about so many different subjects Of interest to him and to us.
Well, after listening to 15 hours of this book, I can say that I have been bored for 15 hours. I am not even sure if I read project blue book or if it was just bits of it. And last week when congress met to talk about UFO's, I never got to hear any of it. I suppose and some say, We Americans think that the UFO's are going to kill us all and take our Natural resources. ........ What natural resources? I think we're running low on them.
My time would have been spent better reading, Ball Blue,
Book On canning.
In 1957, when I was in 8th grade, my teacher told us about project blue book. He made this subject seems so interesting that I wondered for years if we would ever get to see The truth about UFO's and see this book. I wish that he were still alive to See how things have changed over the years in regards to UFO's. But more so then that I wish he were alive so that I could tell him that he was the best teacher I ever had which includes my college professors. Just that Mister bailey talked about so many different subjects Of interest to him and to us.
Well, after listening to 15 hours of this book, I can say that I have been bored for 15 hours. I am not even sure if I read project blue book or if it was just bits of it. And last week when congress met to talk about UFO's, I never got to hear any of it. I suppose and some say, We Americans think that the UFO's are going to kill us all and take our Natural resources. ........ What natural resources? I think we're running low on them.
My time would have been spent better reading, Ball Blue,
Book On canning.
March 25, 2024
This was surprisingly informative - considering the other works of the author. Well-researched and conveyed in an objective manner, this book wants to be taken seriously. And, indeed, there is little to nothing to find fault with.
July 15, 2022
UFO literature's version of Lingchi, pulling story after story of UFO sightings and encounters from the files of Project Bluebook, most of which are desperately boring. Sure, if you're interested in this subject then it's essential to know at least a handful of these cases (Kenneth Arnold's sighting of "flying saucers," Betty and Barney Hill's abduction by stormtrooper-esque Zeta Reticulans, Lonnie Zamora's roadside view of an alien twosome and their strange ship) but I really wish Steiger had livened things up with some Budd Hopkins style commentary or something. And if he'd taken the liberty of inventing pseudonyms for witnesses and interviewees of Project Bluebook rather than repeating how Redacted saw something which was corroborated by Redacted when Redacted was interviewed by Redacted on behalf of Redacted, that would have been super. The Zamora story is the high point of a generally dull book that only true believers are likely to enjoy. Since Project Blue Book mentions John Fuller's
The Interrupted Journey
a few times, it only seems fair to end my review by suggesting you read that much better book instead.
March 24, 2015
From a research point of view this book is hard to beat. Its a rich source of information which has aided me in writing my book series. What I like most about this book is that it was written at a time when the UFO culture was untainted by the internet.
bETTER THAN THE WATERED DOWN ufo
bETTER THAN THE WATERED DOWN ufo
July 6, 2019
Okay, I'm not getting into the 'are they real' or 'are people seeing things' argument. Let me just say that I've followed this since 1947 when I saw Kenneth Arnold's sighting in a Chicago newspaper. I must have been 8 or so. I recall how they gradually became known as flying saucers due to his description of a stone skipping across the water. Yeah, and I saw the headlines in the Chicago papers when an object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico later that year. Ten years later, I wrote, and got a rare A+, on my term paper in high school which was about UFO's. Not flying saucers, a term the Air Force capitalized on to ridicule those who reported them. Through the years I've read of the whole Project Blue Book Air Force cover up. Now comes this book about how they went about their investigations. While it didn't change my opinion of are they real or not, it did show me that the Air Force did a tremendous amount of work investigating them. However, they made one fatal mistake. At the start they said, "We refuse to consider them as alien craft," and that has led to all the cover up charges. They tried to explain every sighting as conventional objects (planets, balloons, airplanes, etc.) The result? Appendix A of this book, about 23 pages of some over 500 cases investigated between 1947 to 1969 which they list as unexplained, no conventional explanation fit. When their lead investigator, an astronomer from Northwestern University, became a believer, they fired him and closed the investigation. It has not stopped the reports. UFOs - Fact or Fiction? The truth is out there.
March 1, 2021
Some Information in this book not written by Steiger?
I’m giving this book at least 4 stars based on the possibility that Brad Steiger actually DID write all of it. Still, I’m not so sure. Therefore, only 4 stars.
From just about the first moment I began reading this book I got the sense that Brad Steiger did NOT write several sections of the 2019 publication of the book. Well, of course, since he died in 2018, that would stand to reason. But these ‘posthumous’ sections seemed to imply that he at least wrote them back in the day when the book first came out in 1975/76 or since then. I don’t believe that was the case. But since I hadn’t read it at that time, I can’t say for sure.
Several of the sections in this imprint of the book sound as though they were written by a physicist, mathematician or electrical engineer. And, no, I don’t believe these sections were written by J. Allen Hynek, either. Hynek was an astrophysicist/astronomer, and while he was certainly intelligent enough to write the sections on physics, his writing style differed considerably and he tended to write so that the lay-public was capable of understanding what was being said. AND, he wasn’t obfuscating which is obviously what whoever wrote these added sections seems to be doing. In fact, what this individual is saying seems to conflict with what Steiger, himself, stated in different areas of the book.
Nor do I think that Steiger’s wife, Sherry, who also died in the early months of 2020 provided this ‘extra’ information. It almost seems as though ‘someone’ surreptitiously inserted some additional information in this ‘re-printed’ version of the book hoping no one would notice primarily to support the US Air Force’s claim that there was never anything to the UFO phenomenon?
But still, how would Steiger even know anything more than he might have been told by, say, Hynek, whom he certainly could have interviewed for this book? The military/government, after all, is extremely proprietary, and their track record to date has indicated that they would confuse, deflect or outright refuse to divulge whatever Steiger might have wanted to uncover.
I’m quite familiar with Steiger’s work, having read many of his books from as far back as the early to mid 70s. And although I did not read this particular book when it was first published, I am, as I said, quite familiar with Steiger’s writing style. While much of it does appear to be taken from the first publication of this book, other sections seem to have been written by someone altogether different, while additionally inserting the conclusion(s) they wish the reader to reach.
This is an interesting development since Donald Schmitt, who is allegedly the ‘co-author’ of this updated version of the book, also allegedly has a very checkered past. And the fact that this is a M.U.F.O.N book (one of five such books) on UFOs and M.U.F.O.N is believed to have been founded/managed by one of the alphabet agencies makes the provenance of this version of Brad Steiger’s Project Blue Book … book, even MORE difficult to swallow.
Since, as I said, I didn’t read Steiger’s first version of this book (and, interestingly, can’t seem to locate a copy) I can’t say for sure what he actually thought about UFOs OR Project Blue Book. But the fact that several early parts of the book and the last chapter, Chapter 12, seem to be encouraging the reader to make up their own mind about whether UFOs/ETs are real or not and even suggests that he believes they may be a product of consciousness, is a far cry from what several of the suspect sections are saying outright, which is that UFOs/ETs are just a product of our collective imagination and that the United States (in particular) really has nothing to worry about since they don’t really exist.
Additionally, I find it interesting that the sub-title of this book was: The Top Secret UFO Files that Revealed a Government Cover-Up, while whomever is (in my opinion) substituting for Steiger in several sections implies or outright states that there WAS no cover-up. Ok, so which is it? Either they were/are or weren’t/aren’t. If they weren’t and Steiger was the one who came up with this title, surely he would have placed a question mark at the end of the sub-title?
As far as the claim that the public is unfairly accusing the USAF of essentially withholding information: is that not what they have done and are still doing? There is plenty of documentation that can be obtained through FOIA – the Freedom of Information Act – that strongly suggests (at the least!) that the public has been lied to on this and many other subjects!
Although, truthfully, since Project Blue Book was discontinued in 1969 – and as far as we know the USAF no longer maintains jurisdiction over the realm of ‘National Security’ – they can no longer be held responsible for whatever information is or isn’t released to the public.
The problem is, since at least 1970 – when the public was informed that because UFOs didn’t really exist since they were ultimately a figment of the public’s collective imagination – there have been more UFO sitings than ever. And not just sitings: but actual interactions with ETs.
Bottom line: Project Blue Book was just a blip on the radar of the subject of UFOs. There is a LOT more data – the smoking gun? – that leaves Blue Book a weak footnote in this saga.
For more information on the history of UFO sitings in the 20th Century, consult volumes 1 and 2 of UFOs and the National Security State, Chronology of a Cover-up by historian Richard Dolan. It should be pretty obvious after perusing the voluminous information in these and others of Dolan’s books that WE REALLY ARE NOT ALONE.
I’m giving this book at least 4 stars based on the possibility that Brad Steiger actually DID write all of it. Still, I’m not so sure. Therefore, only 4 stars.
From just about the first moment I began reading this book I got the sense that Brad Steiger did NOT write several sections of the 2019 publication of the book. Well, of course, since he died in 2018, that would stand to reason. But these ‘posthumous’ sections seemed to imply that he at least wrote them back in the day when the book first came out in 1975/76 or since then. I don’t believe that was the case. But since I hadn’t read it at that time, I can’t say for sure.
Several of the sections in this imprint of the book sound as though they were written by a physicist, mathematician or electrical engineer. And, no, I don’t believe these sections were written by J. Allen Hynek, either. Hynek was an astrophysicist/astronomer, and while he was certainly intelligent enough to write the sections on physics, his writing style differed considerably and he tended to write so that the lay-public was capable of understanding what was being said. AND, he wasn’t obfuscating which is obviously what whoever wrote these added sections seems to be doing. In fact, what this individual is saying seems to conflict with what Steiger, himself, stated in different areas of the book.
Nor do I think that Steiger’s wife, Sherry, who also died in the early months of 2020 provided this ‘extra’ information. It almost seems as though ‘someone’ surreptitiously inserted some additional information in this ‘re-printed’ version of the book hoping no one would notice primarily to support the US Air Force’s claim that there was never anything to the UFO phenomenon?
But still, how would Steiger even know anything more than he might have been told by, say, Hynek, whom he certainly could have interviewed for this book? The military/government, after all, is extremely proprietary, and their track record to date has indicated that they would confuse, deflect or outright refuse to divulge whatever Steiger might have wanted to uncover.
I’m quite familiar with Steiger’s work, having read many of his books from as far back as the early to mid 70s. And although I did not read this particular book when it was first published, I am, as I said, quite familiar with Steiger’s writing style. While much of it does appear to be taken from the first publication of this book, other sections seem to have been written by someone altogether different, while additionally inserting the conclusion(s) they wish the reader to reach.
This is an interesting development since Donald Schmitt, who is allegedly the ‘co-author’ of this updated version of the book, also allegedly has a very checkered past. And the fact that this is a M.U.F.O.N book (one of five such books) on UFOs and M.U.F.O.N is believed to have been founded/managed by one of the alphabet agencies makes the provenance of this version of Brad Steiger’s Project Blue Book … book, even MORE difficult to swallow.
Since, as I said, I didn’t read Steiger’s first version of this book (and, interestingly, can’t seem to locate a copy) I can’t say for sure what he actually thought about UFOs OR Project Blue Book. But the fact that several early parts of the book and the last chapter, Chapter 12, seem to be encouraging the reader to make up their own mind about whether UFOs/ETs are real or not and even suggests that he believes they may be a product of consciousness, is a far cry from what several of the suspect sections are saying outright, which is that UFOs/ETs are just a product of our collective imagination and that the United States (in particular) really has nothing to worry about since they don’t really exist.
Additionally, I find it interesting that the sub-title of this book was: The Top Secret UFO Files that Revealed a Government Cover-Up, while whomever is (in my opinion) substituting for Steiger in several sections implies or outright states that there WAS no cover-up. Ok, so which is it? Either they were/are or weren’t/aren’t. If they weren’t and Steiger was the one who came up with this title, surely he would have placed a question mark at the end of the sub-title?
As far as the claim that the public is unfairly accusing the USAF of essentially withholding information: is that not what they have done and are still doing? There is plenty of documentation that can be obtained through FOIA – the Freedom of Information Act – that strongly suggests (at the least!) that the public has been lied to on this and many other subjects!
Although, truthfully, since Project Blue Book was discontinued in 1969 – and as far as we know the USAF no longer maintains jurisdiction over the realm of ‘National Security’ – they can no longer be held responsible for whatever information is or isn’t released to the public.
The problem is, since at least 1970 – when the public was informed that because UFOs didn’t really exist since they were ultimately a figment of the public’s collective imagination – there have been more UFO sitings than ever. And not just sitings: but actual interactions with ETs.
Bottom line: Project Blue Book was just a blip on the radar of the subject of UFOs. There is a LOT more data – the smoking gun? – that leaves Blue Book a weak footnote in this saga.
For more information on the history of UFO sitings in the 20th Century, consult volumes 1 and 2 of UFOs and the National Security State, Chronology of a Cover-up by historian Richard Dolan. It should be pretty obvious after perusing the voluminous information in these and others of Dolan’s books that WE REALLY ARE NOT ALONE.
April 26, 2023
It's so sad how a large # of the American people believed the nonsense explanations the government tried to spoon feed us the last 60 yrs and counting. All deception will and must come up to be acknowledged and healed. We must raise our frequency to make frequency hertz of ❤️ & unity consciousness.. waking up is happening spontaneously all over the planet. It's only a matter of time before the planets frequency reaches the necessary level. Approximately in the next 10 years at the rate spiritual awakening flow is currently at. Open your mind as a blank slate, forget everything you thought you new, remove expectations, and let the universe communicate with you as was intended by the creation of Hu-man
December 14, 2024
Massive tome in charting a phenomenon. The sighting that started it all, UFOlogy's first martyr, the landing of an UFO in New Mexico, dogfight over Fargo, mystery of the Lubbock Lights, the night UFOs buzzed the White House, deriving a model UFO, the findings of Project Sign, possible explanations of the reports, Dr Hynek's conferences with astronomers, the Soviet effort to contact extraterrestrial life, the unidentified (photos), maps, charts... the book started extremely intriguing and flattened out a bit at the end with too many appendices and fillers. Otherwise a remarkable and exciting approach. Love books like that since early youth. Highly recommended!
December 28, 2024
he was always good for the weird and spooky stories back in the 60s
and I think this is pretty much the point where he ran out of steam after this.
1977 onwards, you got to lower your expectations further
and even worse when the covers were at least good from 1965 to the mid 70s
after people couldn't fucking handle any more Atlantis and the Ancient Astronauts he went off into Cat Miracles
I'm just bummed out he didn't do a 20 volume work on a haunted choo choo train.
Least he did 10 years of solid covers and my mom actually did like all his 1967-1973 haunted and spooky stories of ghosts
"I saw Abe Lincoln taking off his boots"
January 13, 2020
Having watched some of the History Channel show, this was really insightful. Lots of the politics that hindered true scientific analysis are lost on the show.
One of the most disheartening aspects of project Blue Book was that it’s findings depended wholly on how objective the head was - some asked scientific questions while others made the evidence fit preconceived notions.
One of the most disheartening aspects of project Blue Book was that it’s findings depended wholly on how objective the head was - some asked scientific questions while others made the evidence fit preconceived notions.
January 12, 2021
Interesting read. There is a lot of repetition, but it's mostly because of reports from different people so it got a little boring to read when I just kept reading the same thing over to see maybe one or two details differed from people. It's a good book, and it's worth the read.
April 27, 2020
I gave 4 stars to the history importance of the project, but the book is a bit boring because the "cases" are well known for decades.
Yes, I am saying two contraditory things and I don´t care :D
Yes, I am saying two contraditory things and I don´t care :D
July 2, 2021
Surprisingly boring.
January 6, 2026
A wonderful read with a lot of great information included!
There weren’t many stories included that I’d read previously, so it was great to see some new stories!
There weren’t many stories included that I’d read previously, so it was great to see some new stories!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews