Book Review: American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (2019). Diana Walsh Pasulka.

I heard about this book a couple of years ago, when Ezra Klein, the New York Times columnist and podcaster, interviewed the author on his podcast, The Ezra Klein Show.

Dr. Pasulka is a PhD Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of North Carolina, who stumbled into the world of UFO believers and researchers when she realized that there were extensive Biblical and historical references in her own Vatican archives research to stories of miracles going back to the early Middle Ages, which, if stripped of the belief system of whatever religious perspective was at play in these accounts, seemed remarkably similar to modern-day UFO sightings.

This led her to begin to explore modern UFO believers and their claims, and to take their stories more seriously as real physical or psychological phenomena which should be studied scientifically as well as philosophically. She was also fascinated with new forms of religious belief and experience in the age of “miraculous” technologies, such as we’ve seen since the mid-20th century.

In the process of researching and investigating the history of the modern UFO era, she discovered for herself (before the New York Times revealed it to the world in 2017) that there were many very serious scientists, government officials and wealthy tech individuals pursuing UFO research, but that until recently they almost uniformly refused to admit it publicly, for fear of being ridiculed or undermining the more conventional parts of their careers.

American Cosmic is somewhat unique among UFO books, in that it is a scholarly and philosophical exploration of UFOs and UFO literature in the context of religious experiences going back to ancient times, and forward into our modern technological era. It makes for an interesting and thought-provoking read on this puzzling phenomenon. Recommended.