It did not take me more than 8 or 10 pages to realize that the title for this book is incredibly misleading. Although it does present the stories and photos of most important/memorable people from the early years of UFO research, it is far from an impartial, academic presentation of evidence. Mr. Story (aptly named) and his 'consulting editor' J.Richard Greenwell, both have their own kindred theories to push, which of course means trashing other theories, all in a very pretentious text-book encyclopedia format. They were both members of APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization), which I surmise from the name would have to include everything from owls to rainbows. Not surprisingly, this organization seems more preoccupied with debunking other authors/organizations than with providing a straight-forward collection of material and allowing the reader to be the judge. Several well-known UFO incidents, such as the Jessup/Varo/Allende matter, are actually an account of Mr. Story's personal efforts to track down and 'debunk' as much of the story as possible, and with embarassingly flimsy 'evidence' which is mostly his own conjecture.

I rated the book two-stars rather than one since it has a fairly good collection of photos, which may be helpful to those who can ignore Story's wearisome editorializing. It also has an extensive bibliography of other books that are of a much higher caliber, and useful to anyone looking to expand their collection of UFO related literature. Since this book seems to command a reasonably, and understandably, low asking price, I would say picking up a used copy for less than $10 would be worth the trouble. Certainly would not recommend paying much higher than that.