WHY ARE THEY WATCHING US? by Allen Louis Erskine

FIFTEEN YEARS IN THE MAKING! Clocking in at a slim 124 pages with some very large text, it's hard to imagine how author Erskine spent all that time. This meager volume delivers all the same old midcentury UFO meatloaf, barely reheated despite the blistering ad copy about "frightening facts" and how this book might just save the entire planet. At least you can't say that Tower Books didn't know how to dress up a piece, as they give us another one of those fun covers with a menacing model UFO.

Those flying Swedish jelly bags are back, as is Antonia Villas-Boas and his very close encounter ... although perhaps out of modesty for his sake Erskine leaves him anonymous, decent chap. By now we should know the Hill's story by rote, and all the back and forth between J. Allen Hynek, debunkers like Philip J. Klass, the USAF and the Condon Committee. Things like the Mystery Airship flap of 1897 and Mantell "dogfight" crash of 1948 are trotted out again, we get a quick sidetrack to Ezekiel's Wheel, and by the time we're begging for some reprieve Erskine finally shakes it up and blames the great Northeast Blackout of 1965 on UFOs! 

(Update Sept 3 2023: According to Hilary Evans in his enormous catalogue of his personal UFO library, Erskine was a pseudonym used by Irving A. Greenfield which accounts for their shared interest in the Northeast Blackout of '65 being UFO related.)

In 1975 Tower Books put this title out again with a Chariots facelift, which must have been de rigeur judging by the frequency of reissued bold text plain faced covers we've seen!

Table of contents:

1.  UFOs Swarm Over the Northeast (5)

2.  UFO Overflights (20)

3.  From Beyond (41)

4.  The 1947 Flap (63)

5.  Fighter Pilot Dogfights UFO (69)

6.  The Ghost of Mantell (71)

7.  UFOs at White Sands (75)

8.  UFOs - The Illusion Becomes Real (77)

9.  "The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth" (83)

10. They Have Landed and Made Contact (89)

11. What Caused the Blackout? (98)

12. Yes, We Have Pieces of a UFO (103)

13. What UFOs Are Not (107)

14. The $300,000 Snow Job (110)

15. A Touch of Human Interest (114)

16. What's the Answer? (121)

Tower Books, 1967