The Roswell incident took place amid the flying disc craze of 1947, sparked by widespread media coverage of pilot Kenneth Arnold's alleged sighting.

[3][4][5] The Roswell story gained significant attention in 1978 when retired lieutenant colonel Jesse Marcel, in an interview with ufologist Stanton Friedman, said he believed the debris he retrieved was of extraterrestrial origin.

[10] The book argues that an extraterrestrial craft was flying over the New Mexico desert to observe nuclear weapons activity when a lightning strike killed the alien crew and, that after discovering the crash, the US government engaged in a cover-up.

[15] Berlitz and Moore's narrative was dominant until the late 1980s when other authors, attracted by the commercial potential of writing about Roswell, started producing rival accounts.

[23] Independent researchers would find patterns of embellishment in Jesse Marcel's accounts, including provably false statements about his military career and educational background.

[24] The Roswell Incident was the first book to introduce the controversial second-hand stories of civil engineer Grady "Barney" Barnett and a group of archaeology students from an unidentified university encountering wreckage and "alien bodies" while on the Plains of San Agustin before being escorted away by the Army.