Here we go again.

It would be interesting and perhaps important to know why men have such a perennial fascination with the idea of wildly spectacular events and civilizations in the distant past….

The pattern is always the same: an omnium-gatherum of what myths, legends and historical records will fit the author's thesis, they being trimmed to fit if necessary while those that can't be so treated are ignored; a snowstorm of data either irrelevant or erroneous; page after page of rhetoric; and a repeated reminder that the dogmatic Establishment also persecuted Galileo. The trouble with refuting any of these books is not that it's hard—rather, it's unsportingly easy—but that to go down the line, point by point, takes more time and print than is worth anybody's while….

In justice, I should say that [von Däniken] seems quite sincere, and concerned with raising questions rather...