Listen free for 30 days
-
The Close Encounters Man
- How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
The Close Encounters Man
Buy Now for $27.83
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
In June 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold looked out his cockpit window and saw a group of nine silvery crescents weaving between the peaks of the Cascade Mountains at an estimated 1,200 miles an hour. The media, the military, and the scientific community - led by J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer hired by the Air Force - debunked this and many other unidentified flying object sightings reported across the country. But after years of denials, Hynek made a shocking pronouncement: UFOs are real.
Thirty years after his death, Hynek's agonizing transformation from skepticism to true believer remains one of the great misunderstood stories of science. In this definitive biography, Mark O'Connell reveals for the first time how Hynek's work both as a celebrated astronomer and as the US Air Force's go-to UFO expert for nearly 20 years stretched the boundaries of modern science, laid the groundwork for acceptance of the possibility of UFOs, and was the basis of the hit film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With unprecedented access to Hynek's personal and professional files, O'Connell smashes conventional wisdom to reveal the intriguing man and scientist beneath the legend.