A review by wyntrchylde
The Day After Roswell by Philip J. Corso

3.0

The Day After Roswell
Author: Col Philip J Corso with Wiliam J Birnes
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published In: New York
Date: 1997
Pgs: 341

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
As Chief of the Army’s Foreign Technology Division in 1961, Philip J Corso stewarded the Roswell, New Mexico, alien artifcats in a reverse-engineering project that led to: integrated circuits, fiber optics, lasers, super tenacity fibers, and seeded the Roswell alien technology to the giants of American industry. The Roswell tech was a grand leap forward and powered the boom in the 20th century American military-industry complex.

...If...if it’s true and this isn’t just another cover story.

Genre:
Autobiography and memoir
Conspiracy theories
Controversy
Espionage
Government
History
Military
Non-fiction
Science and nature
Space
UFOs

Why this book:
Roswell. Truth. Retired Colonel. Senator Strom Thurmond.
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The Feel:
Feels repetitive chapter to chapter. The format and style and the way the chapter structure is broken up make it seem that a lot of stylistic, textual forms are reused. The same information is re-communicated a number of times.

Pacing:
The style and repetitive nature of some of the text negatively impacts the flow and pace of the story.

Hmm Moments:
Post 1947, the CIA, Navy, and Army did more to trigger the Man in Black scare than anything else. They went into a full court press to ferret out Soviet agents in and around the areas specific to the material recovered from Roswell. The plan came out of the Truman administration, probably originating either with the CIA or the DOD.
Ask too many questions and knocking at your door would be a couple of plainclothes investigators who didn’t need a search warrant to rummage through your things. So maybe the army was a little overzealous in the interrogation procedures…

This gives an excuse for the massive technological explosion that man underwent in the last century, but it doesn’t give man much credit. Yes, it does give him kudos for reverse engineering the tech, but it doesn’t give any credence to the idea that these leaps were purely a product of mankind’s ingenuity. Halfway through the book, I’m begging to get that watching television feel where the guy with the funky hair is about to appear and say, “I’m not saying it’s aliens...but it’s aliens.”
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Last Page Sound:
Is he part of the cover up and only feeding us “his” version of what happened? By his own admission everything was steeped in hoax and dissembling, so how do you trust his account.

Author Assessment:
The repetitive chapter to chapter bit with Corso’s angst over the reports and what he’s got and his talks with Trudeau begin to grate after you re-read almost the same exchange for the third or fifth time. Whether these were actually repeated conversations or if these were one conversation remembered a dozen times in service to telling each items’ story as it went through the industrialization process from the Army to R&D guys to the defense contractors is unclear, but each chapter seems to have another repeat of the conversation.

Editorial Assessment:
Editorially, someone should have said something about how the repetitive structures of the chapters was impacting the story flow. Almost seems like an editor may have only looked at this as each chapter was completed vs how all the chapters hung together as a whole.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright

Disposition of Book:
Half Price Book stack

Would recommend to:
no one
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