Annual Report Of The Officers Of The Town Of Plymouth N H

Author : Matthew Bowman
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300274424
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Download or read book The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill written by Matthew Bowman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of an alien abduction and its connections to the breakdown of American society in the 1960s In the mid-1960s, Betty and Barney Hill became famous as the first Americans to claim that aliens had taken them aboard a spacecraft against their will. Their story—involving a lonely highway late at night, lost memories, and medical examinations by small gray creatures with large eyes—has become the template for nearly every encounter with aliens in American popular culture since. Historian Matthew Bowman examines the Hills’ story not only as a foundational piece of UFO folklore but also as a microcosm of 1960s America. The Hills, an interracial couple who lived in New Hampshire, were civil rights activists, supporters of liberal politics, and Unitarians. But when their story of abduction was repeatedly ignored or discounted by authorities, they lost faith in the scientific establishment, the American government, and the success of the civil rights movement. Bowman tells the fascinating story of the Hills as an account of the shifting winds in American politics and culture in the second half of the twentieth century. He exposes the promise and fallout of the idealistic reforms of the 1960s and how the myth of political consensus has given way to the cynicism and conspiratorialism and the paranoia and illusion of American life today.