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The Roswell Incident
Charles Berlitz & William L. Moore
Signed / inscribed
*The Roswell Incident*, published in 1980 by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, is the book that launched the modern Roswell legend. Drawing on interviews with people connected to the 1947 recovery of mysterious debris near Roswell, New Mexico, the authors argue that the wreckage came from a crashed extraterrestrial craft and that the U.S. government mounted a cover-up. Berlitz, already a bestselling author of *The Bermuda Triangle*, brought a popular touch; the result reads as breathless investigative journalism, heavy on secondhand testimony and speculation. Historians and skeptics have been scathing about its evidentiary standards, yet its cultural influence is undeniable: nearly every later Roswell book descends from it. For readers interested in how a modern myth is manufactured, it is a revealing period piece.
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The authors
Charles Berlitz (1913-2003), grandson of the language-school founder, was a bestselling writer of paranormal speculation, most famously The Bermuda Triangle. William L. Moore was a UFO researcher who co-authored this book and remained a controversial figure in ufology.
The book
Published in 1980, The Roswell Incident revived a long-forgotten 1947 event, assembling recollections - notably from intelligence officer Jesse Marcel - to argue that debris recovered in New Mexico was of extraterrestrial origin and that the truth was suppressed.
How it has aged
Critics called it a collection of hearsay built into fantastic conclusions, and the anthropologist Charles Ziegler labeled it "version 1" of a myth that later authors rewrote. As history it is unreliable; as the seed of a cultural phenomenon it is important.
For more context
Compare skeptical accounts such as Kal Korff's investigations, or the U.S. Air Force's own Roswell reports, for the other side of the story.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Charles Berlitz & William L. Moore
- Publisher
- Grosset & Dunlap
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1980
- ISBN
- 0-448-21199-8
- Shelf
- History
- Location
- Maine
Signed by the author
Added from photo pass