The Fourth Mind by Whitley Strieber is the first book ever to explore the anatomy, brains, genetics, beliefs and capabilities of the unknown entities the author refers to as "the visitors." He maintains that they have a set of abilities he describes as a "fourth mind" that include such powers as telepathy, levitation, the ability to move heavy objects without machinery, and many others.

He then shows that there is a rich store of evidence that mankind once possessed these same powers, and that hidden knowledge of them has persisted into the 20th century.

To explore why we lost them and how we can regain them, he takes a dive into the chaotic end of the last ice age when mass extinctions devastated the planet and mankind endured a catastrophe so terrible that it has buried by traumatic amnesia. He shows how it resulted in our loss of these powers, and describes how a forgotten event involving our visitors that took place in 1996 in Brazil holds the key to our recovery of them.

There has never been another book like The Fourth Mind. It marks the beginning of a new way of thinking about who and what we are, and points toward the re-empowerment of mankind as a truly cosmic species.