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Ben Mezrich

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The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway Hardcover – September 6, 2016

by Ben Mezrich (Author)

3.7 723 ratings

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This real-life The X-Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind tells the true story of a computer programmer who tracks paranormal events along a 3,000-mile stretch through the heart of America and is drawn deeper and deeper into a vast conspiracy.

Like “Agent Mulder” of The X-Files, computer programmer and sheriff’s deputy Zukowski is obsessed with tracking down UFO reports in Colorado. He would take the family with him on weekend trips to look for evidence of aliens. But this innocent hobby takes on a sinister urgency when Zukowski learns of mutilated livestock, and sees the bodies of dead horses and cattle—whose exsanguination is inexplicable by any known human or animal means.

Along an expanse of land stretching across the southern borders of Utah, Colorado, and Kansas, Zukowski discovers multiple bizarre incidences of mutilations, and suddenly realizes that they cluster around the 37th Parallel or “UFO Highway.” So begins an extraordinary and fascinating journey from El Paso and Rush, Colorado, to a mysterious space studies company and MUFON, from Roswell and Area 51 to the Pentagon and beyond; to underground secret military caverns and Indian sacred sites; beneath strange, unexplained lights in the sky and into corporations that obstruct and try to take over investigations. Inspiring and terrifying, this true story will keep you up at night, staring at the sky, and wondering if we really are alone...and what could happen next.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Atria Books
Publication date

September 6, 2016
Dimensions

6.25 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

150113552X
ISBN-13

978-1501135521
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mezrich writes vividly and grippingly… It all makes a terrific story.” ― Washington Post

“A book to make X-Files fans twitch in excitement, Mezrich connects dots we didn’t even know existed.… A nicely dramatic narrative... Something’s clearly happening out there in the high meadows and along desert highways... Fans of Art Bell and company will find all the affirmation they need.”

― Kirkus

"Fascinating... Chuck Zukowski takes up UFO investigations as a hobby, but it slowly turns into something more. ... Mezrich approaches the material seriously, preserving the human element but taking care to present the facts. Zukowski’s realization that many sightings and events line up along the 37th parallel is the culmination of years of investigations, and after thrilling stories of lights in the sky, screams in the night, and mysterious dark helicopters, readers will be more than ready for the exciting revelation." ― Publishers Weekly

"[E]xtremely engaging … the inclusion of photos and important documents really helps the reader understand the intricacies of the investigation." ― Press Association (UK)

"The 37th Parallel makes strong case for UFO's. Riveting." ― USA Today

About the Author

Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He has published seventeen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which was the basis for the hit movie 21. He lives in Boston.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The 37th Parallel

CHAPTER 1

37.2841° N, 108.7787° W

September 12, 2000. A stretch of interstate highway winding along the base of the Ute Mountain Range near the Colorado–New Mexico border, a little after 4:00 p.m.

In a panoramic splash of pine trees and puffs of falling snow, flashes of brilliant sunlight reflected off the cap of Ute Peak, the Sleeping Mountain, high above. And then a beat-up RV lumbered into view. Over the rumble of the camper’s engines rose the off-key tenor of an all-American family sing-along.

Chuck Zukowski was at the wheel of the twenty-four-foot Winnebago Warrior Class A, both hands tapping out the rhythm of “Sweet Home Alabama” on the thick vinyl of the steering wheel cover. Early forties, sandy-haired, fit, Chuck was smiling as he navigated the camper down the serpentine asphalt. His three kids were in the back, one girl and two boys, and his wife, Tammy, a pretty brunette, was up front, joining Chuck in keeping the beat with her fingers against the dash. From the lines beneath Chuck’s blue eyes, it was obvious that they’d been driving for quite some time, but there was enough vivid scenery flashing by outside to keep even the youngest kid from getting bored. This sort of road trip was something the Zukowski clan enjoyed. In fact, when Chuck finally spotted the small ranch-style motel along the highway, coinciding with the notice from the dulcet tone of the RV’s audio GPS, he was almost reluctant to pull in for the night.

After parking the RV in the empty motel lot, Chuck grabbed a pair of room keys from the lobby manager, and the Zukowski family settled into two adjoining rooms overlooking a tarp-covered pool. The kids went straight for the TV in their room, after a quick dinner, microwaved to perfection in the RV, but next door, Tammy headed for the bed and sank into it with a tattered paperback, exhausted from the long day in the camper.

A few hours later, the kids finally let the TV get some rest, and Chuck closed the door between the two rooms. The sun was long gone outside, the view of the shuttered pool replaced by an inky blackness, broken only by the occasional flare of neon from the vacancy sign hanging above the motel lobby. Tammy was still digging into the paperback, but Chuck could tell she was down for the night. He ran his fingers through her hair and then told her he was going out for a short walk. Barely looking up from the book, she asked him to get some ice from the machine on his way back.

He took the ice bucket from the mantel by the door and headed out to the parking lot. Opening the back of the RV, he leaned into a four-by-four storage compartment and reached toward a locked strongbox affixed to one wall. With a jangle of keys, he pried open the box and exchanged the ice bucket—which he would fill when he returned to the Winnebago—for his equipment: a three-pound police flashlight, a video recorder, an EMF counter, and three rectangular batteries. Then he reached for the leather holster hanging from a hook at the back of the box and removed his .40 caliber Glock from it before checking the cartridges and strapping it to his waist.

By the time he exited the RV, snow had started to fall again, but even so he could see the headlights snaking toward him down the desolate highway.

• • •

Two hours later Chuck was breathing hard as he burst through the last line of thick pines into a clearing following his two companions—an athletic man, midthirties, sporting a pony tail and dressed in a thick hunting jacket with a machete slung over one shoulder, and a thin, slightly older woman struggling along in a bulky snowsuit and too many scarves. Tufts of low grass covered in snow punctuated the field of icy gravel. The three of them were now at least eight thousand feet up, high enough to feel the altitude; the other man, Joe Fex, part Native American, a rugged outdoorsman reared on the ranches that pockmarked this corner of the country, was barely sweating as he began setting up their makeshift campsite, raising a canvas tent to protect their equipment. But the woman was trembling from exhaustion and certainly fear. Chuck had no worries about Fex; the big man was an old friend and had accompanied Chuck on many similar excursions over the years. But the woman was a wild card; Chuck had met her over the Internet not two weeks earlier, and the drive over to the base of this hike was the longest time Chuck had spent with her in person. Chuck would have been much happier if they could have left her behind—but it was her information that had brought them to this spot.

According to her website, she was supposed to be some sort of psychic. Chuck wasn’t the type to judge anyone—for all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial. More likely, she was batshit crazy, but it didn’t really matter. As usual, Chuck had done his research. The psychic might have been the first to turn him on to this particular location, but now he had a case file an inch thick on this place.

Case file or no, the next two hours licked past in near silence, the three of them getting colder as the wind picked up, rustling through the nearby pines and sending ice chips and gravel skittering across the ground. Chuck wondered if they should cut out and chalk it up as another in a long list of wild-goose chases. In a few more hours, the kids would be waking up, and Tammy would want to get back on the road and find someplace for a good, cheap breakfast. Maybe there was a Denny’s somewhere up the interstate.

Chuck froze midthought, as he noticed something strange. The wind seemed to have stopped—not gradually, but suddenly—and the air went silent. He opened his mouth to say something to Joe, but before he could get the words out, there was a sudden flash of light in the pitch-black sky above. Incredibly bright, at least three hundred feet up—and it stayed lit. Before Chuck could shout for Joe to grab the camera from the tent, a second light joined the first, and the two flashes sprinted through the air in a wide arc. Then, it seemed as if the entire sky had opened up, lights exploding everywhere, brighter than the Fourth of July.

“Holy shit!” Chuck screamed. “Joe . . .”

Joe was already dashing at full speed around the psychic—who had curled into a ball on the ground, her face a mask of pure terror—and into the tent. He quickly returned with the camera and all three batteries. Chuck grabbed the camera from Joe’s shaking hands, turned it toward the sky, hit the button—and . . . nothing.

The camera was dead.

Chuck cursed, yanking the battery out of the device, jamming the second fresh battery into the base. He hit the button again. And again, nothing. He tried the third battery, but it was obvious all three batteries were now, inexplicably, completely drained. Chuck felt his pulse rocketing in his veins. To have one backup battery go out would have been unusual—but all three?

“What the hell are they?” Joe shouted, as the two men stared at the lights arcing back and forth through the sky above them. “Helicopters?”

Chuck shook his head. His mouth was dry, his chest constricted with fear. He’d never seen anything like this before.

“No way. Helicopters can’t move like that. Or fly that close together.”

“A meteor shower? Some sort of discharge? Or . . .”

And just as suddenly as they had started, the lights vanished. Completely. The sky went back to black. A strange, intense silence spread across the clearing, severe as a leather belt snapping tight. Not a single tree branch twitched.

And then a high-pitched scream pierced the air, from somewhere below the tree line, maybe two hundred feet down the mountain.

Christ. Chuck looked at Joe as the screaming grew louder. There was a crashing of tree branches: Whatever was making that noise was coming toward them. Some sort of animal, maybe an elk or a moose, running at full speed, screaming that unnerving, terrified scream. Bearing down on them, louder and louder, diving headlong through the pines toward the clearing . . .

And then just as suddenly as it had started, the noise cut off dead, midscream. The animal, whatever it was, had been running from something. Something that had taken it down in a single stroke.

The breeze picked back up, and the night switched back to normal, as if none of what Chuck and his companions had just experienced had ever happened.

Chuck stared at Joe, at the way the big man was shivering beneath his hunting jacket, and then at the psychic, who was sobbing on the ground. Then he looked down at his own trembling hands, one of which was resting on the hilt of his .40, still in its holster.

He shook his head, completely unnerved.

“Whatever ran that animal down—this Glock isn’t near big enough, is it?”

At that, even in his terrified state, he almost cracked a smile.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; First Edition (September 6, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 150113552X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501135521
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,949 in UFOs (Books)
- #2,250 in Scientist Biographies
- #2,622 in Unexplained Mysteries (Books)

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3.7 723 ratings

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Ben Mezrich

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With a writing career spanning 19 years, Mezrich has authored twenty books, with a combined printing of over 6 million copies, including the wildly successful Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, which spent sixty-three weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, and sold over 2 million copies in fifteen languages and was adapted into the #1 Box Office movie 21. His book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal – debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List and spent 18 weeks there in hardcover and paperback, as well as hit bestseller lists in over a dozen countries. The book was adapted into the movie The Social Network and was #1 at the box office, won Golden Globes for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay, best score, and was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning 3 including Best Adapted Screenplay. Mezrich and Aaron Sorkin shared a prestigious Scripter Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as well. Mezrich is the only non-fiction author to have two number one box office movie adaptations which has earned him the title of Sexiest Author on People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive List.

Ben Mezrich cracked the Hollywood Reporter’s annual hot list: Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors. This power list of authors touted to be “the industry’s most sought-after word nerds” is based on stats like Mezrich’s multiple movie deals in production such as Woolly, Seven Wonders, Once Upon a Time in Russia, and The 37th Parallel.

Ben’s newest book Bitcoin Billionaires chronicles the second act of wonder twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss as they claw their way through Silicon Valley and come out on top as the first bitcoin billionaires after an unlikely-to-win battle with the omnipotent Empire–Facebook.

Ben co-writes a middle grade fiction series Charlie Numbers with his wife Tonya, their newest book: Charlie Numbers and the Woolly Mammoth will hit shelves November 5th, and is slated to be produced for the big screen by Ellen Pompeo.

Mezrich recently joined the Writers Room for the hit Showtime TV show Billions as Consulting Producer for season 5.

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Very informative book that is well worth reading.

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2017

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I finished the book some time ago and took some time to think about the The 37th Parallel before writing a review.

My wife and I know and are friends with Chuck and Tammy (whom this book is written about). Maybe that gives me a little better insight to his character in the book, but I think the way that Ben Mezrich wrote the book, it should be obvious that Chuck is both enthusiastic as well as passionate about his quest for the truth behind alien beings and ufology. As a matter of fact, Chuck is passionate about pretty much everything he does as well as his family and his work.

The author's portrayal of his wife Tammy is spot on as well. Even though Tammy is a non-believer in aliens and UFO's, she believes in her husband and is 100% supportive of him.

I have had discussions with Chuck about various things that were touched on in this book, but have never been on any investigations. Reading the book gave me much more detail into the types of things that Chuck encounters in his investigations, obstacles he has to deal with and how much real effort goes into the numerous investigations he has done.

I enjoyed the book and the information that was presented in it. And for those people that didn't like the ending, I'd recommend reading it again and try to plug yourself in to the mind set of Chuck. I think if you do, you will realize that the end of the book isn't the end at all really, it is the beginning.

5 people found this helpful

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David J. Kreiter

An Intriguing Adventure

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2016

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Ben Mezrich’s book, The 37th Parallel, is a fictionalized account based on the true-life adventures of Chuck Zukowski, a microchip engineer, sheriff’s deputy, and independent UFO investigator, and his sister Debbie Zukowski, a Missouri MUFON field investigator and STAR team member. The title of the book, The 37th Parallel, details the very strange and often sobering events that have occurred along and on either side of latitude 37, a strip of territory running through our nation’s midsection including: Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California to the west and Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia to the east. An inordinate number of military bases and a statistically unlikely number of paranormal anomalies and UFO activity has, and still is, occurring along this UFO highway. Most disturbing of all, over 10,000 surgically precise, bloodless, animal mutilations have plagued ranchers and landowners along this corridor since the early 1970s.

The situation with cattle mutilations became so bad with one rancher near Dulce, New Mexico losing 50 head of cattle to this bizarre phenomenon between 1975 and 1983 that New Mexico Senator Floyd Haskell from Colorado and Harrison Schmitt from New Mexico got involved by writing letters to the FBI office in Denver and to the attorney general of the United States, respectively. Their actions initiated a formal FBI investigation in 1980.

The 37th Parallel is full of intrigue, and author Mezrich makes the reader feel part of the brother and sister investigative team as they trek down the UFO highway, probing the mysterious UFO phenomenon, all the while being threatened and followed by mysterious unknown agencies apparently unhappy with their involvement.

The 37th Parallel is written in a nonlinear sequence, jumping forward and backward in time with each new chapter, confusing at times, but adding to the mystery and intrigue. This book is a page turner with an inexplicable surprise at the end of the book. I recommend the book for those who enjoy a good real- life mystery and a writer who is adept at telling a good story. I can’t wait for the movie!

This review written by an Iowa MUFON Investigator

6 people found this helpful

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Uluru II

Printing and editing errors

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2019

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My copy of this book has numerous printing and editing errors. See the photo — the second sentence of the entire book is compressed into one word. Then, in Chapter 2: “...he finally reached the dirt turnoff to the fifty-acre cattle-and-horse ranch, whose owner, Glenda, had called him.” Two pages later, still in the same location: “He’d been on plenty of ranches over the years...Glenda’s compound wasn’t unusual. Eighty or so acres...” So which is it, fifty acres or eighty acres? I can forgive the writer this mistake, given the incredible amounts of information he’s managing, but where are the editors and proofreaders? I continue to find similar issues.

How does this happen from a respectable publisher like Simon & Schuster? How does this pass through multiple professionals’ hands but still get printed with a bunch of dumb mistakes? It’s especially disappointing for a book like this, about UFOs, where you’re already fighting an uphill battle of credibility. Most people by default are taking it with a grain of salt, so an amateurish print edition sure doesn’t help things. The book is interesting and otherwise well written; I just wanted to point out the editing QC issues for people who might care.

27 people found this helpful

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Charles M. Zukowski

The 37th Parallel (A book about true-life events.)

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2016

Verified Purchase

I gave this book 5 Stars because I'm Chuck Zukowski, the investigator in the book. First, I receive no profits from the book, but what I do receive is, knowing people are reading about real events that have affected mine and my family's life. (Over 30 years.) Ben Mezrich has a phenomenal writing ability putting information out to the public in which everyone can enjoy, and it was an honor working with him. While you're reading this book, you'll learn a lot about UFOlogy, from "Balls of Light" to "Animal Mutilations" which are still occurring, as recent as late August, 2016. These events are real! Some comments I've read are from people who don't like the ending of the book, some people want to see a conclusion, or conclusive evidence Aliens exist, well it's a lot more complicated than that. We live in a world where information is being hidden from the public, and some people seem to disappear when getting too close, so the only way to combat that, is to get as much information as we can out to the public; and this book does that. Read the book, decide for yourselves, and if you have any questions, simply email me... Thank you...

204 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Josef Mengele

Get your kicks on the 37th Parallel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

The truth is out there and it involves American military big money, Corporate Space Tech companies, hybrid humans, lizards, reptiles, and a whole host of other non binary specie peeps that has become the norm during the past 20 -30 years.
Keep on digging people, the real truth will surface soon enough and I do hope the good human specie is ready and willing.

Sean van Buggenum

very poor ending

Reviewed in Germany on July 9, 2017

Verified Purchase

I still don't know what sort of a book this is.
Is it full of fiction?
Is it non-fiction?
If non-fiction, what is the authors reason for ending the book in the manner he did, and not revealing the information he apparently has ?
If a work of fiction, why do you pretend it is based on fact? Additionally, if a work of fiction, I could imagine a much more interesting story myself.
Please explain yourself to those who forked out the money for your book. I don't think any of us are amused!

Abhijit Parial

Could have had a better ending.

Reviewed in India on April 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

Some parts of the book are outright scary, has a kind of Stephen King vibe to them. But at large is not as good as it could have been. The story is all over the place and easy to loose track of. Everytime the story builds up an expectation, it branches off in another direction. Nevertheless, I would say it's a must read for the UFO-nuts.

One person found this helpful

Darryl Pickard

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on October 9, 2016

Verified Purchase

So far so good.