Charles E. Sellier (1943–2011)

I've categorized this as fiction. It relies on typescripts—TYPESCRIPTS—of supposed historical documents that nobody has ever seen. To wit: the "missing" Booth diary pages, the Potter Papers, and Lafayette Baker's coded manuscripts. Several researchers, Edward Steers Jr. preeminent among them, have debunked most of these, see his excellent reference The Lincoln Assassination Encyclopedia. Booth's diary pages were probably used as letters by Booth, and were likely already missing when discovered (not taken out later). And, besides, the typescripts of the supposed diary supposedly came down in a line of Stanton's family that never existed. Andrew and Earl Potter, supposed secret agents and authors of the missing documents behind the typed Potter Papers never existed. And Baker's coded documents, also missing, are fakes. All make chronological mistakes and several other errors.

Then, the conspiracy does not make sense. And is too large to have actually worked without being found out. And makes no sense.

And, finally, John W. Boyd, supposedly killed in John Wilkes Booth's place, was in his forties, graying, with different eyes, and 6′ 2″. There is no way he could've been mistaken for Booth.

And, another reason to call it fiction: it is written as if it is a novel. (It is basically a script for the more a novelization of the movie.) There are interior monologues and stilted dialogue. Poor, poor dialogue. The pictures are nice enough, getting it a star. But some of the stuff there really isn't addressed in the text.… (más)

I was a teenager in 1976, when David Balsiger's and Charles Sellier's In Search of Noah's Ark was published. I enjoyed reading the book then, and talking about it with friends at the time. Thirty-five years later, I still recall it fondly (occasionally), although I've retained a more general sense of it than any specific details.

In a nutshell (spoiler alert?), the book recounts a mid-20th-Century discovery of frozen, prehistoric wood fragments embedded in ice on a culturally significant mountain-top in Turkey, which show signs of having been worked with tools, and from trees found elsewhere in the Middle East but far from the mountains of Turkey. The authors' primary purpose, it seems, is to affirm pre-history accounts of the Great Flood and the Hebrew tradition of God's saving Noah in the Ark. To this end, Balsiger and Sellier interweave then-contemporary, "scientific" data, research and exploration with mild suppositions and interpretation, in ways that support viewing these legends as based in fact.

It's not a challenging book to read; I'd be curious now to see a Lexile score for it. Apparently, the authors' intended audience was a broad spectrum of readers among the general public (there presumably was such thing in 1976), and the book isn't either particularly persuasive or particularly off-putting. I don't recall that the authors "beat you over the head" with polemics, doctrine or argumentation -- an absence I appreciated in 1976 and find even rarer today. There's probably some nascent sensationalism here, endemic to the "speculative journalism" genre; but it's by no means the quick-cut, e-media techno-frenzy we've grown accustomed to, nor Bermuda Triangle-style astonishment / intrigue, nor even a garden-variety "this dark, grainy still photo shows Nessie, because I was there." Rather, the book purports to offer objective reporting, and invites readers to consider some interesting possibilities as to its meaning.

For me, the real benefit of this work came from later reflection on the authors' conclusions, and on reactions of friends who read it when I did. Those reflections may have given me insight on, and patience for, religious perspectives often dismissed today as "literalist," "fundamentalist" or "evangelical." If one simply approaches the book with a willingness to suspend disbelief, its reasoned suppositions can afford the reader an appealing view of what might actually have been -- and, by extension, some significance of legendary events to faith and belief today.… (más)