The 37th Parallel
The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway
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3.1 • 28 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A real-life mix of The X-Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Mezrich “writes vividly and grippingly…A terrific story…[that] will make a heck of a movie” (The Washington Post). Here is the “fascinating” (Publishers Weekly) true story of a computer programmer who tracks paranormal events in remote areas of the western United States and is drawn deeper and deeper into a mysterious conspiracy.
Like Agent Mulder of The X-Files, microchip engineer and sheriff’s deputy Chuck Zukowski is obsessed with tracking down UFO reports in Colorado. He even takes the family with him on weekend trips to look for evidence of aliens. But this innocent hobby takes on a sinister urgency when Zukowski learns of mutilated livestock—whose exsanguination is inexplicable by any known human or animal means.
Along an expanse of land stretching across the southern borders of Utah, Colorado, and Kansas, Zukowski documents hundreds of bizarre incidences of mutilations, and discovers that they stretch through the heart of America. His pursuit of the truth draws him deeper into a vast conspiracy, and he journeys from Roswell and Area 51 to the Pentagon and beyond; from underground secret military caverns to Native American sacred sites; and to wilderness areas where strange, unexplained lights traverse the sky at extraordinary speeds. Inspiring and terrifying, Mezrich’s “dramatic narrative…connects dots we didn’t even know existed…Something’s clearly happening out there in the high meadows and along desert highways” (Kirkus Reviews). The 37th Parallel will make you, too, wonder if we are really alone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mezrich (Once Upon a Time in Russia) pieces together a fascinating, if ultimately disappointing, account of a UFO investigator's quest to find evidence meretricious enough to convince his skeptical wife and the world at large that UFO's exist. Chuck Zukowski takes up UFO investigations as a hobby, but it slowly turns into something more. He travels widely, often with his family, to museums, UFO "hot spots," and locations of sightings and strange phenomena. As he develops tools and connections to investigate further, he finds himself risking his job and safety to find the truth. Each firsthand account fills in a little more of the unfolding puzzle, and Zukowski's personality and close observations bring the investigations to life. Mezrich approaches the material seriously, preserving the human element but taking care to present the facts. Zukowski's realization that many sightings and events line up along the 37th parallel is the culmination of years of investigations, and after thrilling stories of lights in the sky, screams in the night, and mysterious dark helicopters, readers will be more than ready for the exciting revelation. However, perhaps in a misguided attempt to preserve a sense of mystery, Mezrich artfully censors Zukowski's final discovery. What is the promised secret of the 37th parallel? If Zukowski said, Mezrich isn't telling.
Customer Reviews
No stars
This book is the most near nothing about nearly nothing I've ever had the misfortune to pay real dollars for.
Examples:
P 28 - . . . "A .22 gauge shot gun"
P 35 - . . . "dials and gauges click and hum"
(In a WWII P-61 night fighter with two huge P&W radial engines 10 ft on either side of the cockpit making no racket at all?)
P 39 - "radar operator sitting behind and below the pilot" (below and in front)
P 40 - ". . . "bogies to starboard. Pilot shifts his eyes to the left to spot them." (Duh!)
P 41 - "pilot grabbed the rudder in front of him" (to dive out of the way) Sheeesh!
P 43 - Bogies now behind. "Starboard sir."
"Shifts eyes again to left." Double DUH!
The rest of the book is about cattle mutilations without a single reference to Linda Moulton-Howe who really has written definitely and intelligently about the subject.
Don't even think about purchasing this amateur piece of crap book.
Worst. Ending. Ever. Completely pointless.
I am furious with this book.
The story was very captivating for the entire book. I was quite enticed by Chuck’s life-long search for evidence, and self-training to be a better researcher.
Then I reached the end of the book.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
The last few paragraphs are REDACTED. Seriously? So, literally, the moment the entire book was building up to was for absolutely nothing.
What was the point? What was I supposed to take away from that empty, meaningless ending? Was I supposed to think that you, Ben Mezrich, are a masterful storyteller? That you were so incredibly brilliant with your book ending that your readers would find it humorous that the culmination of the story ended without any concrete information at all? Please, what a cop-out.
You are horrible. Way to ruin a good book.
A lot about nothing at all
A complete waste of time. No answers, not even enough fact to draw a conclusion.