Crop Circles: The greatest mystery of modern times [Hardcover]

At first, the author did a good job explaining some of the theories. For example, one can tell a real crop circle from a fake, using five variables. Real crop circles have unbroken stems, are stretched and bent at the base of the plants, and leave an electromagnetic signature that can be measured with sophisticated instruments. There are three other variables the experts look for to determine a real circle from a hoax. They materialize out of nowhere in a matter of minutes. Some are 1500 feet in diameter. Unfortunately, Ms. Pringle did not tell us which crop circles pictured in her book were real and which were phony. This left us feeling like she wanted to mislead the public. We know that 80% of all crop circles are manmade (fake). The other 20% are unexplained. Ms. Pringle did not help us to learn which ones pictured in the book were not genuine.

For example, there was a photo of the most mysterious crop circle of them all (in our opinion), which is a glyph of ancient Mason Text from the time of Augustus Caesar. I saw this glyph shown on a television show, and some PhD's translated it. The glyph resembled the latin words "Oporto Apsos" which translates roughly into "we opose cunning and deceit." But Ms. Pringle didn't say a word about this glyph in the book! She had the picture in the book, but didn't confirm if the words were real or a hoax. She didn't give readers the translation either. So this made us feel like she was a bit slopply in her research. One would expect an analysis of each picture. Again, here is an example where we felt like the book was too vague.

Real crop circles display sophisticated elements of Euclidian Geometry, and some are related to musical composition. Ms. Pringle did not do an analysis of the Geometry, which really dissappointed us. I have seen Geometry analysis done by other researchers in this field and this is crucial information in understanding the special intelligence and perfection of workmanship displayed in a real crop circle. Lastly, Ms. Pringle devoted a good portion of the book interviewing local witnesses about various phenomenon. We didn't find this very credible. This portion of the book seemed unscientific, and poorly researched. The local witnesses came across as uneducated and superstitious. Their observations were sometimes silly and childlike. Some of the witnesses seemed to exagerate normal occurances. For example, a witness is sitting in the center of a crop circle in the pitch black of night, and suddenly hears footsteps and "strange" noises. The witness firmly believes that the noises are alien crop circle makers. Later on in the book, another witness from the same village speaks about deer, birds and other animals being injured in the crops. If you put two and two together, deer and birds can also sound like "footsteps" and "strange noises" in the night.

In summary: The book's photos left us in awe at the simplistic beauty and sophistication of the crop circles. But we wish we could have learned more. We are still as baffled as ever.