UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth

In the summer of 1947 something mysterious crashed in the New Mexican desert near the town of Roswell. Whether it was an alien spacecraft manned by tiny humanlike beings or—the US government's official explanation—a scientific research balloon has long been a subject of passionate debate. Transcending the believer-versus-skeptic debate, anthropologists Benson Saler and Charles A. Ziegler contend that the Roswell story is best understood as a modern American myth. They show how the story—and its continual retelling—tap into modern fears about the power of technology, the duplicity of the government, and the power of the media. UFO Crash at Roswell also includes physicist Charles Moore's meticulous account of how 1947 experiments to launch balloon-borne radar reflectors may have led to the Roswell UFO myth.