....This is an excellent example of beginning research into the field to bring zero-point and its potential to the everyday reader. I think Cook has done an admirable job. It is a little slow in the beginning and full of too many subjective conclusions about some events and documents, but when Cook finally mentions zero-point (on page 100 of the British edition) he begins rolling and his work into the historical aspects of free energy during Germany in WWII is captivating, especially the Nazi tests in Poland.
Good job into the history of zero-point, but there are a few weeknesses. He should have stayed away from the UFO aspects and the Philadelphia Experiment altogether, although the latter's connection with the beginning of radar cloking and its possible installment in the B-2 was interesting. Cook realizes that a lot about these modern myths is exxageration, and he does distil down what they say to a logical point of believability.
Cook is also a little heavy on presenting "anti-gravity" as more taboo than it is. I don't think an American would have even seen it that way. I don't really think he intended that aspect of the British journalistic mentality to shine through: that they, in essence (Jane's), and other major aeronautic publications, are too "establishment-centric." Cook is far too dependent on "who" somebody is as opposed to the science and physics involved.Cook admits shockingly he doesn't know much about physics, a not-so-reassuring trait in an aeronautic consultant.
This allows for the roll of "Dr. Daniel Marckus" in the background as Cook's nebulous mentor. This also adds a little bit of an "Ipcress File" overtone that perhaps makes some of it look a little too staged of fictional, but life is stranger than fiction.
But this is Cook's hunt for it, his road to a conclusion. After he wises up in the latter half of it, when he understands there is a vast underbelly in the world of science and energy (instead of worrying about the dos and don't of his journalistic peers), he becomes a worthy hunter and he comes close to corralling his target.
Dr. Boyd Bushman wakes him up in the end with "look at the data, not the theory." In essence, don't look at who somebody is, the degrees behind their name, look at the results. It is only then that he goes to Vancouver to talk to John.
This is a lesson for us all: like the Wright Brothers, Tesla or Edison, the great inventors of zero-point wont be any "whos," they will be the pioneers in a new world not door keepers in an old.
Zero-point is out there waiting for anyone to bag it, just like a thousand people trying to master flight in every field, by every barn, 100 years ago. The more out there trying the better chance the mystery will be cracked!
A great book to start you on your own hunt!
This book is really about the journy of discovery that the author takes in trying to figure out if anti-gravity craft were ever secretly built rather then a book about any actual difinitive evidence that such things existed.While there is nothing at all difinitive about the auothors conclusions, it is facinating to follow him along his journy thorugh the history of covert programs and the characters that populated them. Much of it might be way off base, but there is enough historic fact to be interesting in it's own right (at least to me). Besides, the author writes in an entertaining style that keeps a person wondering what he'll come up with next.
One more thing, the reviewer who mentioned seeing a Meissner effct device in Edmunds Scientic Catalog, is making a bit of a mistake. The Meissner effect is a magnetic field phenomina, that has been studied from grade school classrooms on up for at least 15 years. It really has nothing to do with the non-magnetic phenomina that the author is investigating, and I don't recall it actually being mentioned in the book at all.
