There are some niches that require filling, but that don't resent themselves until after they are filled. Who would have known that there needed be a book collecting images of flying saucers attacking? Apparently, Eric and Leif Nesheim did. Their book, 'Saucer Attack!' seems as if it is required to exist. It is perfectly collated, collected and presented. Not one person will pass it by without picking it up. And once you do, you won't want to put it down. Well, if you read the sort of books and see the sorts of movies that I do, anyway.

Ray Palmer was an early adapter of flying saucer lore. This hunchbacked dwarf did more for aliens than H. R. Giger.	The Cold War looks pretty hot in this lurid paperback book cover.

There's not a lot of text in 'Saucer Attack!', but what text there is, is informative. They cover the basics of saucer lore, from H. G. Wells to Kenneth Arnold to Ray Palmer to George Adamski, mostly with the garish and fascinating images generated at the time. They do a fantastic job at covering the implications and hidden messages of saucer imagery, born mostly in an age of Communism, Cold War and the potential for a very hot Third World War.

The Invisible Invaders -- body snatchers and puppet masters were veil thin masks over the Menace of Communism!	Build-it-yourself saucers were all the rage in the Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines of the 1960's.

Starting with 'D-Day Earth', and covering subjects as diverse as 'Backyard Saucers' and 'Invisible Invaders', the Nesheims do a fantastic job at focusing on one small object to examine the culture at large.

The Nesheims put a lot of images on a single page but don't make the reader's head explode with garish excess.

Their efforts are aided by excellent production design. They collect multiple subjects and images on a single page, but never manage to explode, annoy or confuse the reader.

They also collect some well-known and unknown images, making association that others might miss.

From the Outer Limits to Archie -- six degress of separation?

Note the low word count on this review? That's because in 'Saucer Attack!', pictures tell the story. I've only offered a very few of those in the book, and not all of the best. Your best bet would be to get to a bookstore and order up this nice slab of easy-on-the-eyes culture.