Love it or hate it, Roswell is now a foundation stone for the belief in aliens visiting us from outer space. Rather than yet another trawl through the various theories, stories, and rumours about a crashed flying saucer and the retrieval of its crew, Schmitt and Carey provide an exhaustive survey of the celebrities and VIPs who have been influenced (‘touched’) by Roswell.

There is certainly no shortage of stars and well-known faces who have been attracted to Roswell. These include Dan Ackroyd, Ted Danson, Mike Farrell, Jackie Gleason, Larry King, Hughie Green, Shirley MacLaine, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Christopher Reeve, Ann Robinson, Robert Stack, Henry Winkler, Elvis Presley, and Ozzy Osbourne. Then, of course, there are a range of politicians, military men, and the like. Each gets their own biographical entry here and a description of their association with the Roswell enigma.

Some of them got involved due to making documentaries or films about the most famous flying saucer crash of all time. Others came to investigate, like millionaire Robert Bigelow, who invested in a search of a supposed site of the crash that turned out to be the product of someone’s fantasy. Elsewhere we get an entry on Werner von Braun who is alleged to have been a regular visitor to Roswell and a stenographer who claimed to overhear him saying there had been three UFO crashes – one at Roswell and two elsewhere.

The book underlines how the media engagement with Roswell, has launched TV shows like The X-Files, and has helped keep it in the public eye. Roy Thinnes, the star of the classic TV series The Invaders, makes the pertinent point in his introduction that ‘Those of us who will never go to the stars or ever explore other worlds can still go to Roswell.’