The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill : Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America

A gripping account of an alien abduction and its connections to the breakdown of American society in the 1960s “Excellent and exhaustive.”-Colin Dickey, Slate 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