Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ORIGINAL "X-Files", 22 Dec 1998
By A Customer
Fort had the great good fortune to inherit an adequate amount of money to allow him to spend a good portion of his adult life browsing through the stacks at the New York library and collecting the thousands of incidents that comprise the four books in this collection. If there is any unifying thread to this astonishing compilation, it is that Fort despised dogmatism, both religious AND scientific. (The title "LO!" must stand as one the shortest sarcasms ever.) Fort's writing is bound to infuriate the literal-minded: he tosses out one inane theory after another, not as possible "solutions" to the mysteries he lays out but as spurs to the imagination (and as hilarious jibes on the hubris of science). The four books ("The Book of the Damned", "LO!", "Wild Talents" and "Strange Lands") in this omnibus volume have no "theme" other than the presentation of thousands of records from all over the world about falls of unusual things from the sky, astronomic anomolies, anachronous artifacts, odd animal sightings, and every variety of what we now lump inder the broad category "paranormal". If Fort wasn't the first person to write on these subjects, he is easily the most entertaining and certainly more critical than the hucksters cashing in on the popularity of the subject today. But the books are more than a resource volume of odd occurrances: they are refreshing doses of a purely American wit, scepticism on a Universal scale, and some of the most iconoclastic musings committed to print. One of the great bargains in print - try it!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indispensible, inimitable, incorrigible., 22 Feb 1997
By A Customer
Charles Fort collected what he called "damned facts"; facts that science refused to acknowledge; rains of frogs, eclipses that shouldn't happen, sheep-mutilating werewolves and disappearing Ambroses. He had several mutually contradictory theories to explain them ("I think we're fished for" is perhaps my favorite) and wrote in a jaunty, wry, telegraphic style that could define "inimitable." Indispensible for the well-read UFOlogist or lover of the bizarre, this omnibus volume is indexed by place, date, and type of incident ("Periwinkles, fall of"). Really, Fort should be required reading for all journalists, scientists, and saucer-watchers, if only because of the fights it would start.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Really Good Book, 11 April 1997
By A Customer
The best comparisn I think of for this book is the Bible. Both are really long, both discuss at length strange and inexplicable events that there is no logical explanation for (odd things falling from the sky, people disappearing without a trace, ect.), and both challenge the superiority of science over other, more cosmic forces. However, Charles Fort is a better read than the Bible. And a lot funnier too.
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