Too meta, too self-congratulatory, too much unnecessary history. I feel like this won the Pulitzer for its subject matter and it had nothing to do with Eugenides' ability to create worthwhile characters or meaningful situations.

I love von Daniken's hypothesis, which is that ancient man was visited by aliens and learned their techniques. I was fascinated by his photographs of carvings that were out of place for the time period and depict what does look like beings in spacesuits. I loved the way he took Biblical stories and other commonly known tales and asked the reader to question whether or not these strange gods were actually aliens.

I am very disappointed in the quality of the research and his writing style. He admits himself in the introduction that some facts are not true, and yet in the volume itself those incorrect entries are still in the text as they were in the original publication from 1969, despite the fact that is the 1999 reprinting.

He also spends great portions of the text insisting that things must be true, and spends almost more time insisting his views of a Road to El Dorado-like space traveler history must be true than he does presenting reasons that they are true. I wanted more citations--he makes lots of claims but doesn't offer evidence to back them up.

I would love to read a similar book with more evidence and less fanfare.

This is a weird little book that takes place on an island where children leave their parents when they turn ten to live in a manor house with other children, and they do not leave until they get married and move back to town to have children of their own. It's an interesting premise, but is bizarrely and unnecessarily based on Star Wars: like some weird AU the main character (named Leia, of course) constantly talks about the Force and relying on yourself and how amazing Luke and Leia are in a Jesus/worship kind of way. The writing is pretty boring but thankfully it is a short book. The biggest problem is that Minkman can't decide if her main character is interested in romance or completely opposed to feelings, and there are more pages of Leia waffling than there are of anything happening, which made the story feel in-need-of-a-backrub-tense instead of suspenseful, and incredibly underdeveloped.

While Ronald Story has quite a bee in his bonnet about von Daniken, leading to seriously sassy lines such as "What is amazing here is not the special properties of the iron pillar, but how von Daniken could make four errors in only three sentences." (pp 88), he does an excellent job of following up his refutations of von Daniken's works with photographs, source material, interviews, and snippets from interview with von Daniken himself where he admits factual errors or blatant untruths (of which there are many).

I wish this book had been longer because I would have liked to learn more about the cultures mentioned. One of the most fascinating parts was seeing diagrams of the creation and position of the moai on Easter Island.

The preface by Carl Sagan lends credibility as well, and I found it fascinating that Sagan and other scientists do believe in extraterrestrial life.