Category: Projects

Hunting for a Title for My Book on the Mound Builder Myth

5/25/2019

Seeing as it is Memorial Day weekend and we are facing down the gauntlet of several months stacked with multiple fringe history and UFO TV shows airing each week, I am going to give myself a break today and spend the day correcting copyedited chapter pages instead. I need to get something done before trying to review America Unearthed, Ancient Aliens, and possibly that To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science show all in the same week. My publisher has suggested three possible titles for my Mound Builder book but remains open to suggestions. In the poll below, let me know which you prefer, and feel free to share your suggestions for a better title in comments below.

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Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg Lionizes the Victorians in Heavily Criticized New Book

5/16/2019

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I should begin today with a note in passing about the passing of Stanton Friedman, the UFO researcher who devoted more than four decades of his life to researching—and failing to find—evidence of an alien presence on Earth. A familiar face on the UFO circuit, the 84-year-old Friedman supported the authenticity of the hoax Majestic-12 documents and thus helped to promote a culture of conspiracy in the UFO community by dressing it up in scientific garb.

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This Week's Schedule

12/25/2018

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Merry Christmas to all those celebrating today! In order to spend more time with my family this holiday season, I will be blogging on a reduced schedule between now and New Year's. Depending on when my son falls asleep, I will review Legends of the Lost either this evening or tomorrow, and I will take most of the week off. This weekend I will post my annual year in review feature, and I intend to resume regular posting in the New Year.

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I Am Taking a Sick Day

12/21/2018

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My son came down with a cold this week after contracting it from one of his toddler playmates. He is doing fine and is all better. However, he passed the cold on to me, and I am too sick and achy to write. I am going to take the day today to rest and to hope that I feel better before Christmas.

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Announcing the Upcoming Publication of My Mound Builder Book

12/18/2018

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I am happy to announce that the University of Oklahoma Press had extended an offer to publish my book about the Mound Builders. The book is currently scheduled for a Spring 2020 release, pending final contract approval. The 163,000-word volume will be priced affordably (most likely under $30) and will be available online and at fine retailers nationwide.

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Help Support This Website with Your Contribution This Holiday Season

12/15/2018

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Yes, it’s that time of the year again! Every Christmas season, I follow the lead of NPR, PBS, and the charity of your choice and ask my readers to help with the upkeep of this site and to help keep it commercial and ad-free. This year I have an extra incentive to do so: my tablet died, and my laptop’s hard drive is going into failure and the optical drive fell off. I’m facing down the need to replace all of my electronics!

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Announcing My New Book: "Legends of the Pyramids"

12/7/2018

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I am pleased to announce that I have received a commission from Red Lightning Books and Indiana University Press for a new book, tentatively titled Legends of the Pyramids, which will explore the mythical history of Giza pyramids, from Joseph’s granaries to antediluvian giants to space aliens. The short book will be written for a general mass-market audience and is intended to serve as an overview of the many ways people have imagined the history of the pyramids. It will incorporate material from my blog and focus on the importance of the medieval legend of the antediluvian pyramids from the Akhbar al-zaman in shaping popular understanding of the pyramids and Egyptian history down to the present. The book is currently scheduled for release sometime in 2020.

Here’s a brief overview of the book from my book proposal:

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Survey: How Would You Like to See This Blog Handle Comments?

12/1/2018

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We live in strange times when even the purveyors of conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific nonsense gape in awe at the horrors they have wrought. Giorgio Tsoukalos has happily fronted a TV series that has reveled in all manner of conspiracy theories, from anti-government speculations to Russophile propaganda, and at once point he literally claimed that space aliens made a peace treaty with the coelacanth to spare it from extinction. But this week even Tsoukalos couldn’t fathom how it was that his fans could hold baffling conspiracy theories in their heads at the same time, namely that all of NASA’s visits to the moon were fake but that the U.S. secretly traveled to Mars and established a colony there.

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Correcting the Record: Removal of Spurious Comment from Fake "Graham Hancock"

8/6/2018

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Last December, in response to a blog post I made about Graham Hancock’s foreword to Glenn Kreisberg’s book about an alleged megalithic culture in North America, a commenter posed as Graham Hancock and insulted the intelligence of other commentators, giving the impression that these insults came from Graham Hancock. This commenter was not Hancock, and the words did not belong to Hancock. I was not aware of the comment until the real Hancock called my attention to it this past weekend. The comment, and all responses to it, have been removed from the relevant page for violating my site’s terms and conditions. It is reproduced here as a screenshot, however, so that the context is entirely clear. I condemn in the strongest possible language any comments that attempt to mislead readers into believing they came from someone else, and I apologize to Hancock for the distress that the fraudulent posting has caused.

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"In Search Of" Opens Soft, Loses More than 1 in 10 Lead-In "Ancient Aliens" Viewers

8/3/2018

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I wanted to take a moment today to talk about In Search Of. Regular readers will have read my review of the show and know that I wasn’t too taken with the rebooted series’ approach to mysteries, or host Zachary Quinto’s off-brand Leonard Nimoy impression in a program that reinvents the old documentary series as a personality-focused reality show. But I was surprised to see that audiences seem to agree. Despite the massive promotion the History Channel gave the series, and a comfortable berth with an Ancient Aliens lead-in, the show seems to be performing modestly.

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