A great American crank, in the best sense of the word, Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932) spent his life hunting down reports of "anomalous phenomena"-"damned" events such rains of frogs, cattle mutilations, and UFO sightings-and studying them from a true outsider's perspective, one that characterized even objective science as wearing blinders in its approach to them. In this modern classic of analytical biography, Colin Bennett examines not only the life of this one-man investigator of real-life X-Files but his work as well, likening him to such diverse figures that loom in the cultural imagination as Lee Harvey Oswald and Shakespeare's Hamlet. A must-read for fans of the strange, this riveting book explores why the 20th century, which gave rise to conspiracy-theory philosophies and widespread distrust of social authority, embraced Fort so wholly that his name has been immortalized in the adjective "Fortean." In the course of a delightfully misspent youth, COLIN BENNETT was employed as both a musician and as a mercenary soldier. He was far better at the second than at the first. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he is the author of the novels Infantryman and The Entertainment Bomb, and paranormal nonfiction including Looking for Orthon, a biography of George Adamski; Politics of the Imagination, a biography of Charles Fort; and An American Demonology, about the head of the 1950s UFO-hunting agency Project Blue Book.

Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events addresses the impact of mega-events - such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup - on wider practices of security and surveillance. "Mega-Events" pose peculiar and extensive security challenges. The overwhelming imperative is that "nothing should go wrong." There are, however, an almost infinite number of things that can "go wrong"; producing the perceived need for pre-emptive risk assessments, and an expanding range of security measures, including extensive forms and levels of surveillance. These measures are delivered by a "security/industrial complex" consisting of powerful transnational corporate, governmental and military actors, eager to showcase the latest technologies and prove that they can deliver "spectacular levels of security". Mega-events have thus become occasions for experiments in monitoring people and places. And, as such, they have become important moments in the development and dispersal of surveillance, as the infrastructure established for mega-events are often marketed as security solutions for the more routine monitoring of people and place. Mega-events, then, now serve as focal points for the proliferation of security and surveillance. They are microcosms of larger trends and processes, through which - as the contributors to this volume demonstrate - we can observe the complex ways that security and surveillance are now implicated in unique confluences of technology, institutional motivations, and public-private security arrangements. As the exceptional conditions of the mega-event become the norm, Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events therefore provides the glimpse of a possible future that is more intensively and extensively monitored.

Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events addresses the impact of mega-events -- such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup -- on wider practices of security and surveillance. "Mega-Events" pose peculiar and extensive security challenges. The overwhelming imperative is that "nothing should go wrong." There are, however, an almost infinite number of things that can "go wrong"; producing the perceived need for pre-emptive risk assessments, and an expanding range of security measures, including extensive forms and levels of surveillance. These measures are delivered by a "security/industrial complex" consisting of powerful transnational corporate, governmental and military actors, eager to showcase the latest technologies and prove that they can deliver "spectacular levels of security." Mega-events have thus become occasions for experiments in monitoring people and places. And, as such, they have become important moments in the development and dispersal of surveillance, as the infrastructure established for mega-events are often marketed as security solutions for the more routine monitoring of people and place. Mega-events, then, now serve as focal points for the proliferation of security and surveillance. They are microcosms of larger trends and processes, through which -- as the contributors to this volume demonstrate -- we can observe the complex ways that security and surveillance are now implicated in unique confluences of technology, institutional motivations, and public-private security arrangements. As the exceptional conditions of the mega-event become the norm, Security Games: Surveillance and Control at Mega-Events therefore provides the glimpse of a possible future that is more intensively and extensively monitored.

Flying Saucers Over the White House is the story of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, a US Air Force officer who researched UFO sightings in the 1950s and made a concentrated effort to convince the United States Air Force that UFOs exist. Ruppelt, who coined the term 'UFO', headed "Project Blue Book," an assignment designed by the United States government to investigate and report on the existence of unidentified flying objects and their link to extraterrestrial beings. Ruppelt dissected the evidence, separating chance sightings of ordinary objects from true UFO sightings. He eventually wrote The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, summarizing his findings. In Flying Saucers Over the White House, Bennett examines the life of this "founding father" of ufology, analyzing the evidence and the U.S. government's reporting of this phenomenon for a new generation of readers. COLIN BENNETT has written several books, including The Entertainment Bomb, *Looking for Orthon*, and Politics of the Imagination, which won the Anomalist Award for Best Biography in 2002. After leaving school to become a professional musician, Bennett returned to college to study English at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. He wrote several plays that were performed in London before reinventing himself as an electronics engineer and founding a consulting agency. Bennett currently resides in London where he continues to write and discover new interests.

The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, written by Captain Edward Ruppelt in 1956, was the first serious, unbiased account written about UFOs by anyone connected with the official government investigations of UFO phenomena. Ruppelt, who coined the term "unidentified flying objects" and headed Project Blue Book from 1951 to 1953, includes his personal investigations and findings in his extensive research on UFOs. He discusses both well-publicized UFO sightings and lesser-known accounts, as well as the inner workings of Air Force UFO research. This edition is the original 1956 edition; in 1960 Ruppelt released a second edition which seemed to weaken his original views that some UFO reports could not be explained, and reinforce the Air Force's position that there was nothing mysterious about UFOs. EDWARD J. RUPPELT (1923-1960) was the head of Project Blue Book during the Korean War, from 1951-1953. He served at the Air Technical Intelligence Center, where he took over Project Grudge, a formal investigation by the U.S. military with the goal of debunking extraterrestrial and UFO activity. Under Ruppelt's supervision, the project, later named Blue Book, experienced its most fruitful years, when investigations were properly conducted without judgment or disdain. Many UFO researchers hail him as a pioneer of UFO research and hero in the fight to earn respectability for the field.

A great American crank, in the best sense of the word, Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932) spent his life hunting down reports of "anomalous phenomena"-"damned" events such rains of frogs, cattle mutilations, and UFO sightings-and studying them from a true outsider's perspective, one that characterized even objective science as wearing blinders in its approach to them. In this modern classic of analytical biography, Colin Bennett examines not only the life of this one-man investigator of real-life X-Files but his work as well, likening him to such diverse figures that loom in the cultural imagination as Lee Harvey Oswald and Shakespeare's Hamlet. A must-read for fans of the strange, this riveting book explores why the 20th century, which gave rise to conspiracy-theory philosophies and widespread distrust of social authority, embraced Fort so wholly that his name has been immortalized in the adjective "Fortean." In the course of a delightfully misspent youth, COLIN BENNETT was employed as both a musician and as a mercenary soldier. He was far better at the second than at the first. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he is the author of the novels Infantryman and The Entertainment Bomb, and paranormal nonfiction including Looking for Orthon, a biography of George Adamski; Politics of the Imagination, a biography of Charles Fort; and An American Demonology, about the head of the 1950s UFO-hunting agency Project Blue Book.

On November 20, 1952, George Adamski first made contact with extraterrestrials-including a long-haired youth from Venus named Orthon-in the California desert.or so he claimed. He offered photographic proof. He wrote books about his encounters, including the sensational bestseller Flying Saucers Have Landed. He never stopped advocating the truth of his claims even as he came under extraordinary ridicule. And in the process, however inadvertently, Adamski invented the modern mass counterculture. This new edition of Colin Bennett's modern classic posits, in the author's uniquely engaging style, Adamski as a kind of unwitting performance artist who "structured one of the most blatant acts of visionary cheek of the twentieth century," introducing the jittery postwar Western world to the image of the UFO, which confounded and tweaked authority while also fully embodying Cold War neuroses. Whether Adamski was telling the truth or not is almost irrelevant-though Bennett has his own ideas about Adamski's veracity. What remains compelling about Adamski's bizarre and compelling tale of alien visitations is the transformative power of stories, even if they're false, to warp our culture on a grand scale. In the course of a delightfully misspent youth, COLIN BENNETT was employed as both a musician and as a mercenary soldier. He was far better at the second than at the first. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, he is the author of the novels Infantryman and The Entertainment Bomb, and paranormal nonfiction including Politics of the Imagination, a biography of Charles Fort; and An American Demonology, about the head of the 1950s UFO-hunting agency Project Blue Book.