The Jack Womack Flying Saucer Library at Georgetown University

The Jack Womack Flying Saucer Library at Georgetown University

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The Jack Womack Flying Saucer Library is an astounding collection of popular and fringe thought dedicated to the flying saucer phenomenon that gripped the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. Assembled by Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Jack Womack, this library is important not only in its scope, but in the curatorial expertise that hand-selected the most representative publications of this movement.

The onslaught of Flying Saucer sightings, beginning in the summer of 1947, is remarkable not only because they were reported so widely, but because so many people felt compelled to publish books explaining what these saucers might be. The more books that were published, the wilder grew the imaginings and the broader grew the conspiracies. This collection represents a moment in history where the spiritual and the physical collided in the popular experience.

Womack’s collection contains books, typescripts, pamphlets, tracts and magazines published primarily from 1948 to 1980. Totaling 242 individual items, the collection includes most of the major 1950s works on flying saucers, the works of all major contactees, bibliographies, compilations of so-called photographs, and a number of publications from the Saucerian Press. 19 of the books in the collection are inscribed or signed by their authors. Several books have supporting letters, ephemera, and press materials laid in.

Boo-Hooray is publishing a visual history of the genre, written by Womack himself. The book will be released in 2015.