Book Review: Thunderbirds by Mark A. Hall


 Thunderbirds: America’s Living Legends of Giant Birds

Author: Mark A. Hall

Cosimo Classics, 2008

177 pages

   I decided to re-read this book I got almost 10 years ago. This book was one of the first I added to my collection of cryptozoology themed books when I was intensely interested in the subject. Thunderbirds (alleged giant birds sighted in North America) were one subject that particularly interested me for awhile. This is the only book I know of devoted fully to this subject.

As I am not intensely interested in cryptozoology anymore, and take a skeptical look at mystery animal reports and similar subjects, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this book. After reading it again almost 10 years later, I can say that those who are very interested in thunderbirds and the stories will probably find it interesting; me, not so much.

It is obvious right away that the author, cryptozoology investigator Mark A. Hall, is a believer in the thunderbirds. The book is billed as a “compelling compilation of evidence,” and the definitive reference on thunderbirds, but I found it quite shallow. The parts of the book that are about modern-day sightings of thunderbirds aren’t much more than lists of sightings that often don’t offer many details. Yet somehow, the author manages to come up with the ranges, habits, and life appearance of the thunderbirds from these accounts. I found it to be pretty unconvincing.

Another subject that takes up large portions of the book is legends of thunderbirds believed by Native Americans and legends of other giant birds from around the world. Often these are stories that are remarkably similar to each other (such as a person being taken by a giant bird, hiding in its nest, and flying down using the bird’s feathers (!) or holding onto the giant bird’s leg and escaping). These types of stories only seem like shared folklore but Hall somehow sees them as evidence of thunderbirds living today. He also seems to take seriously stories of birds that hunted whales and dropped their carcasses on the tops of trees and/or mountains.

When it comes to the modern sightings, Hall seems to take what most of the witnesses say as fact. Keep in mind, he does this without there being a shred of physical evidence to back up any of these accounts. Occasionally a story will mention evidence seen by the witness, but in each case it seems to conveniently disappear or get destroyed. These reports on their own could be interesting for people interested in the subject; however, I didn’t find them convincing as evidence.

As often happens in cryptozoology books, Hall also seems to have a problem with scientists. In this case, it’s because zoologists and ornithologists don’t take reports of birds with 15-20 foot wingspans that kidnap people seriously. Again, the lack of physical evidence comes into play here, and the fact that the process of science requires verifiable evidence seems to be a problem for Hall, as well as other cryptozoologists, and instead he views scientists as people who just “don’t want to believe.”

Overall, I did not find this book to be the “compelling compilation of evidence” that it was billed to be. For those interested in the subject of thunderbirds, there’s not much out there book-wise. After reading this book I still found the evidence for the monster birds to be lacking.

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