The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, credited to Edward J. Ruppelt, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, by Edward J. Ruppelt. Read by Roger Melin. 'Straight from the horse's mouth', as they say. Edward Ruppelt was the first head of the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, the official project initiated to investigate UFO reports beginning in 1952. This report from 1956 takes us inside these initial investigations, separates fact from fiction, and gives insight into who, when, where, and how sightings were reported and researched in open-minded fashion (for which Ruppelt was renowned), rather than in the typical hushed and secretive (and censored) manner most often associated with government and military reports which are released to the public. Dozens of specific sightings are recounted, although hundreds more had come pouring into the agency during the period covered (and hundreds, if not thousands more that were never officially reported). Here we go inside the workings of Project Blue Book, which had evolved from 2 earlier Air Force projects, and we are witness to interviews, press conferences, Pentagon briefings, and many reports from civilian and military pilots, Air Traffic Controllers, office workers, farmers, and the man on the street who reported their accounts with UFOs. And not all sightings that were reported were restricted to the U.S. Although Project Blue Book would continue until 1969, here we witness an in-depth account from it's inception and it's earliest stages, the political obstacles, the houndings from the press, the overall confusion encountered during and following many of the sightings, and the near hysteria caused during the heyday of UFO sightings, and all from the man who headed up the project in it's earliest years. The second edition of Ruppelt's work was supplemented with 3 additional chapters which were added in 1960, and we are fortunate that they are included here. (Summary by Roger Melin)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
• Author credits: Edward J. Ruppelt
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 21
• Listed recording duration: 16:05:06

Catalogue topics

• science
• UFO's
• project blue book
• unidentified flying objects

Track guide

1. 00 - Forward — 5:21
2. 01 - Project Blue Book and the UFO Story — 49:57
3. 02 - The Era of Confusion Begins — 51:04
4. 03 - The Classics — 1:03:30
5. 04 - Green Fireballs, Project Twinkle, Little Lights, and Grudge — 43:18
6. 05 - The Dark Ages — 35:06
7. 06 - The Presses Roll--The Air Force Shrugs — 49:36
8. 07 - The Pentagon Rumbles — 43:58
9. 08 - The Lubbock Lights, Unabridged — 51:24
10. 09 - The New Project Grudge — 41:37
11. 10 - Project Blue Book and the Big Build-Up — 53:56
12. 11 - The Big Flap — 58:10
13. 12 - The Washington Merry-Go-Round — 57:22
14. 13 - Hoax or Horror? — 46:28
15. 14 - Digesting the Data — 45:43
16. 15 - The Radiation Story — 33:48
17. 16 - The Hierarchy Ponders — 56:37
18. 17 - What Are UFO's? — 1:03:26
19. 18 - And They're Still Flying — 1:08:03
20. 19 - Off They Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder — 25:04
21. 20 - Do They or Don't They? — 21:44

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.