Book Review: UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (2010). Leslie Kean.

The author of this book is the award-winning New York Times journalist who later co-wrote the explosive 2017 story on the U.S. government’s admissions that a major naval carrier task force had experienced repeated encounters with UFOs, and that the government had in fact been actively studying the phenomenon for decades while denying its existence.

In this book, the author includes summaries of major reported UFO sightings from around the world since the 1940s, followed in each case by the detailed written statements of some of the many highly qualified observers, such as government leaders, military and commercial pilots, police and astronauts who witnessed them. 

After reading this compilation of so many extremely specific and detailed eye-witness reports, it is much harder to believe that UFOs (or UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, as they're now sometimes called) aren't a real, physical occurrence. 

Kean makes the case that UFO encounters and sightings are almost certainly far under-reported due to the social and institutional disincentives to event reporting.  She also highlights how the U.S. government’s policy of constantly debunking and ridiculing them (at that time), while almost certainly maintaining a deniable, highly-classified program to continue collecting data, is at odds with the more open approach of many other countries, and does a disservice to the world's ability to study and investigate UFOs/UAPs scientifically. 

Many other countries in the world (including England, France and many NATO countries) do in fact encourage UFO/UAP reporting, and have open programs for sharing information between countries.  Kean's approach to her material, which is dispassionate, seemingly skeptical and does not assume any particular explanation for UFOs/UAPs, is convincing in making the case for more open scientific investigation of these mysterious phenomena.

This book is probably the best place to start in delving into the current state of knowledge about UFOs, and what our government has been doing (and not doing) for most of the past century to collect and study the phenomenon.  Highly recommended.