
The Unidentified
Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained
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Narrated by:
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Will Damron
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By:
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Colin Dickey
"Absolutely perfect for the current moment." (BuzzFeed)
America's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a tour of the country's most persistent "unexplained" phenomena.
In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational - in fringe - is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures.
Enter Colin Dickey, cultural historian and tour guide of the weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs - from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extraterrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky meat shower - investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and reinventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently engaging.
©2020 Colin Dickey (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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One of the best sociological explanations
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Well-trodden ground
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Every chapter was informative. Many of the incidents are new to me, and I like that the writer wllows for both sides of the story to be presented.
Amazing
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As presumptive in its own conclusions as it claims others are in theirs.
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Great Narration
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That mixes with the content of this book to absolutely do what it’s final moments remind us never to do, “never make the world smaller, only bigger.”
It’s sad that the “few genuinely lingering mysteries — the wheat among the countless chaff of nonsense encounters” according to the author are only discussed for the last 1% of the book. The other 99% is “describe, pique interest, reduce down to metaphor or psychological drive, etc.”
Bummer.
Narrows the world ever so slightly
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for the skeptical paranormal fan
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An Exploration of the Phenomenon of being Human
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If you are looking for a thorough debunking of various conspiracy theories, this may not be the right book for you, though it is skeptical of all conspiracies. There seems to be an assumption that the reader is a skeptic already, so there is no great effort to debunk anything. And, of course, with so much ground to cover (hundreds of years), we never get too deep into the details of any particular conspiracy. I was particularly disappointed in the discussion of the Patterson-Gimlin film found in an early chapter on Bigfoot. We are told flatly that the film is a fake. Then, with just two or three sentences, it is explained that it must be a fake because the creature's gate is wrong (it walks like a male when it is a female creature). And the creature should be pot-bellied as all herbivores are, but it is not. Though the author is probably right that the film is a fake, to dismiss such an important and controversial film with so little discussion seems like a very superficial treatment of a subject that deserves more attention. After all, some very serious chapters are devoted to this film in many Bigfoot books, There have probably even been entire books devoted just to discussing and analyzing the film.
If you are looking for a discussion of contemporary conspiracies, be prepared to be patient or skip ahead, I listened to several hours of this book and most of what I was listening to when I stopped listening was focused on events of the 40s and 50s. I have no idea if or when the discussion of modern conspiracies starts.
Tedious history of conspiracies. Starts in 1800s
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Like reading anything John Keel or Patric
Harper, this gives a framework of logic and societal history to refer back to. Never does the author totally dismiss all possibilities but you realize humanity/ society is a complex and tricky bugger in itself and, after all, why are not the proofs of scientific understanding just as amazing to people as well.
Just enjoy the trip with an open but healthy skeptical mind.
Gives Cause to Ponder
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