The Man Who Mastered Gravity

About the Author

Paul Schatzkin is a nonfiction biographer whose other principal subject is Philo Farnsworth, the television pioneer, covered in his book The Boy Who Invented Television — a title independently cited as a source in Farnsworth's own Wikipedia biography, confirming Schatzkin's standing as a real, working biographer rather than a pseudonymous or content-mill figure. Both of his major biographical subjects are, notably, inventors whose claims and legacies remain genuinely contested.

This site's own case file describes Schatzkin as having drawn on Brown family papers and lab notebooks, and cites him directly as "his own authorized biographer" in reference to a chapter candidly titled "He Made Things Up" — a title that itself signals Schatzkin's willingness to criticize his subject rather than simply promote him. This article could not independently verify the precise nature or extent of his access to the Brown family archive beyond what the case file and the book's own framing state, since Brown's own website (ttbrown.com) blocked automated verification attempts during this research.

Historical Context & Origins

The book's publication history is genuinely tangled and worth stating precisely, since the site's own prior citation had it wrong: Schatzkin first published this biography in 2009 as Defying Gravity: The Parallel Universe of T. Townsend Brown (Incorrigible Arts, ISBN 9780976200017), then revised and reissued it in 2023 under its current title, The Man Who Mastered Gravity (ISBN 9780976200024). A serialized version of the biography, under the same later title, has circulated on ttbrown.com since roughly 2008 — likely the source of the site's earlier date, but a distinct project from the print book with its own ISBN.

This site's own case file independently documents much of what a biography like this would need to grapple with honestly: Brown's work at Denison University with physics professor Paul Alfred Biefeld from 1924–25 building early "gravitator" devices, a 1932 Navy-Princeton gravity survey aboard a submarine, and a 1952 Office of Naval Research evaluation by physicist Willoughby M. Cady that concluded Brown's observed thrust was ordinary "electric wind" rather than genuine gravity control — a finding later reinforced by a 2004 AIAA study (Tajmar) that found the thrust effect vanishes once corona wind is physically excluded from the experimental setup.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

Per the case file's own characterization of the book, Schatzkin's biography presents Brown's life and claims with what the case file calls "genuine sympathy but real reporting" — not a hagiography, but a sympathetic account willing to name Brown's own exaggerations directly, as the chapter title "He Made Things Up" makes explicit.

This article does not treat Brown's electrogravitics claims as validated; this site's own case file's independent sourcing, including the Cady and Tajmar findings above and Wikipedia's own categorization of Brown as a figure associated with pseudoscientific physics, supports treating the underlying science as unresolved in Brown's favor at best, and this article follows that assessment rather than the more sympathetic framing a biography might otherwise invite.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own T. Townsend Brown & Electrogravitics case file documents the full record in far greater depth than this book review needs to repeat: Brown's Navy career, Project Winterhaven, his brief and contentious tenure founding NICAP before being ousted by early 1957 (with Donald Keyhoe and Admiral Delmer Fahrney taking over its board), and later authors' attempts, which the case file treats skeptically, to falsely link him to the alleged 1943 Philadelphia Experiment. Readers wanting the complete, independently sourced record should consult that case file directly.

What is specific to this book is its status as the fullest existing biographical treatment of Brown as a person, distinct from the case file's own more evidence-and-claim-focused treatment of his specific technical assertions and their subsequent scientific evaluation.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), this article found no trade press reviews (Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, or similar) for either the 2009 or 2023 editions, consistent with the book's publication through Schatzkin's own small imprint, Incorrigible Arts, rather than a mainstream biography press. This absence should be read as reflecting the book's limited commercial distribution rather than as evidence against its content.

No skeptical rebuttal specific to the book's own arguments was located separate from the broader, well-documented scientific skepticism toward Brown's electrogravitics claims themselves, already covered in this site's own case file via the Cady and Tajmar findings.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy lies in being the primary biographical source for Brown as a person rather than solely as a set of contested technical claims — useful for readers wanting to understand the man behind the Biefeld-Brown effect and his winding path from Denison University lab experiments to Navy classified work to a brief, failed tenure atop NICAP.

Set alongside this site's own case file, which draws on independent scientific evaluations (Cady 1952, Tajmar 2004) and documents Brown's disputed later reputation directly, this book is best read as the definitive personal and biographical account, with the case file supplying the independent scientific and institutional record a sympathetic biography would not be expected to provide on its own.

The Book

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