Donald Keyhoe (1897–1988)

This old 1950 book is a classic for the more credulous among us. Written by a retired US Marine corp aviator and writer of pop fiction, it gathered together claims and reports of UFO sightings. The author not only asserted that flying saucers exist, but that the US government knew it and was suppressing the truth about them. (Sharper readers may have wondered why the US government made no effort to suppress Keyhoe himself).

The book was highly influential, and gave birth to a mythology that show more has lasted to the present. It also was just the first of Keyhoe's UFO books, as he made a career of the subject. The Flying Saucers Are Real still has its devotees, and was republished in 2006. The book is also available for free online, at sites like this one: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/fsar/index.htm

A personal reflection: to review this book is a trip of reminiscence, since I read an old paperback copy in junior high school when it was exciting (and still possible) to believe in such things. In fact, I took a map of the US and stuck flagged pins in the many locations of such "sightings". (That was fun!) But there comes a time to put away childish things. (Isn't it interesting that UFOs never triggered alarms at a time when US ICBMs and their Soviet equivalents were on hair- trigger alert for any intrusion into national airspace? And that to this day, none of the tens of thousands of satellites orbiting the earth nor any of the countless telescopes trained at the sky have managed to capture any verifiable evidence? By now, we must believe in a massive conspiracy involving most nations on earth -- countries that can agree on nothing else, even anthropogenic climate change. :-)

The cover shown here on my LT copy is the original 1950s one. I used to wonder what the stuff coming out of the saucers was. Electron beams? psychic energy? emissions from a 1950s - style combustion engine? show less

1950. I thought this would be a lot of bull, but it was really convincing. A reporter goes and talks to a whole lot of people who have seen ufos and investigates their claims. The ufos, seen by many witnesses, behaved in ways that terrestrial crafts cannot, neither could they be explained away convincingly by any natural phenomena. Keyhoe concludes that at least one alien race is watching the Earth to see how our technology is developing. For what purpose no one knows. I personally, can't show more wait to meet the aliens. It seems like it should have happened by now. show less

3 Stars — Average, Meh, Will Probably Never Think About Again in Great Detail

This book is a fairly straightforward investigation into a UFO sighting, featuring interviews with military personnel, scientists, UFOlogists, and other journalists covering those topics.
The narrative is pretty engrossing, but the writing style is often clumsy and unsophisticated. Having said that, the book is, as of time of writing this review, 71 years old, so that's obviously a factor.
Definitely a must read if show more you're into UFOlogy and the paranormal, but otherwise hardly essential. show less

Read this when I was about 9 or 10. It was written in a rather technical fashion (considering my age) that lead the reader to believe there was a true story here. Cannot say it totally convenienced the young boy UFOs were real but opened a life time of curiousity and a love for research to find answers and to always believe there is much beyond our understanding that can be real. The unknown is just something that has to be researched then it won't be the unknow.