After reading this book there is no doubt whatsoever that ancient history was quite different than what we are taught at school. In this sense, the books purpose has been fulfilled.
What Childress is good at is choosing fascinating and adventurous topics, capturing the readers attention with mystery and building a case by quoting from many different sources.
Having said that, there are a few things that bother me about his books in general: Childress seems to be a lazy writer who prefers to make compilations of other sources than to write things himself or come up with original thoughts of his own. His books are more Compilation of Materials than genuine story-telling or research. Also, he could spend a little more time writing/compiling/editing his books. There are several grammer mistakes, unfinished lines of thought, unrelated material, unreferenced sources and unclear editing in his books. Just a little more love and care to this important work would be appreciated. Another thing that gets quite tiring after awhile is the constant bashing of and antagonism towards contemporary science and religion. Much more support and cooperation from regular scientists good be gained if he?d stop ridiculing them (a mistake many esoteric authors make).
As far as this specific book goes, the Sanskrit transcripts are detailed and incredibly boring technical manuals to build spaceships, written thousands of years ago. They are in fact so boring, describing every minute detail of building spaceships (how to manufacture metals, interiour, machines, pilots clothing, weaponry, etc.) that there can be no doubt that these are not science-fiction stories or fantasy myths, but just that: Technical Manuals. Funny how the fantastic revelation of ancient spacehips can become this tedious. Since Indian scientists are taking these manuscripts seriously, it would have been interesting to know if and how they are applying this information, but little detail is given on that.
Still, in the context of human history this book is important enough to deserve 4 stars.