In the 1970s, Erich von D�niken sparked a wave of public and scientific debate with Chariots of the Gods?, which postulated that certain archaeological sites pointed to earthly visits by extraterrestrials in the predawn of human history. Since then his ideas have been both attacked as ludicrous and praised as genius, but D�niken himself steers a middle course and simply maintains that his theory is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the evidence. In his latest book, Arrival of the Gods, D�niken returns to South America in search of further proof supporting his ideas, but instead of regurgitating photos and measurements of the familiar scratch drawings on the Nazca plain, he flies to the Palpa mountains, where he finds his evidence, among other things, in the form of giant mandalas and an enormous grid of lines that closely resembles the landing aids found in modern airports. Color photographs of D�niken's discoveries burst from the pages of Arrival of the Gods, accompanied by prose that barely contains his contagious excitement over these striking earthworks. Anyone who has previously dismissed D�niken's work out of hand should beware: there is much more going on here than the odd prattlings of a single subversive author. --Brian Patterson