A review by yakob
American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by D.W. Pasulka

2.0

If you are in the UFO community do not bother with this book. From her podcast appearances Pasulka may seem like she brings new incite to the phenomenon, but disappointingly she presents it as a religious event. I would be okay with this if she backed it up with evidence but instead she gives us a first person narrative of meeting experiences and scientists (that she keeps anonymous) without much evidence other than repeatedly saying these are smart people and name dropping institutions they are affiliated with. But, by keeping them anonymous we have no way to validate that they work at those institutions or if they are even real people. Sure in ufology we often rely on belief and not hard evidence but a huge portion of this book is about her “really smart science colleague” converting to Catholicism. What does this have to do with the phenomena!? The only reason I’m giving this 2 stars and not one is because chapter 4 does have some notable arguments about how the media constructs a collective imagination of the phenomena that makes it more digestible than it’s true incomprehensible nature.