The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained
America's favorite cultural historian and author of Ghostland takes a "thought-provoking and delicoiusly unsettling" (Publisher's Weekly) 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 extra-terrestrials, 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 re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.
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Community Reviews
This was my first time reading Colin Dickey, a cultural historian. I read this book as part of a library reading challenge. The category was "Read a book about an unsolved mystery." I chose it because I wanted to know more about a bunch of unsolved mysteries. As it turned out, by the end of the book, Dickey debunks most of these mysteries. If you like knowing weird stuff, this book is for you.
Like in Ghostland, Colin Dickey challenges our views on conspiracies, UFOs, and cryptids by asking not if they exist, but why do people believe or don’t believe they do. He goes over the histories of conspiracies, UFOs, and cryptids and dives deep into why some people believe.
This was an interesting book and really challenged my views on the creation of these three things, especially the racism embedded within. I was very fascinated by the racism aspect of this book because it is something I have never read about before in a cryptid/UFO book. Dickey just continues to challenge my perspectives on the creation of things and their racist undertones, which just keeps me wanting to read more from him.
I learned a lot about the origins of certain cryptids, UFOs and lost cities like Lemuria, which I had never heard of before. The biggest thing for me was that I found the first part of the book about conspiracy theories a bit boring, but that was more because it's a topic that doesn’t really interest me. But I did understand why he started with that since parts of it came up throughout the rest of the book.
Overall, this was another fascinating book from Dickey. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.
I love all things paranormal. I grew up reading everything I could find about Nessie, Bigfoot, etc. I was looking forward to this book, but the author’s bias is so prevalent that it soured the book for me. I don’t understand why he wrote this if he doesn’t believe or even seem to care about the subject. Could have been so much better, but the author’s “this is so stupid” attitude just ruins this.
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