Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

by Annie Jacobsen

It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades.

Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now.

Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror.

This is the first book based on interviews with eye witnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top-secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that facts are often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.

• ISBN10: 0316132942
• ISBN13: 9780316132947
• Publish Date: 17 May 2011
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 544
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Excellent book. I don’t know how Annie Jacobsen compiled the half of it. Her work is extensive and exhaustive and it’s fascinating on all fronts. How could it not be, with a subject like this? But in connecting the dots of such an unwieldy story, it never bogs down. Her research is as satisfying as it is incomplete and disconcerting— the few pixels of a much larger picture. And she presents it without hype or paranoia, not even when such things could arguably be justified.

Lest you think this is 500 pages of UFO nuts: not hardly. It’s our military history, our aviation history, our hubris and folly and wizardry and triumph. The nuclear program, the Cold War, the Space Race; it all connects in a few hundred square miles of desert. And yet, always, Jacobsen keeps this story focused on the human aspect, the interesting people behind these black projects instead of only the black projects themselves. It’s their foibles and heroics that write history. Even history so secret it doesn’t officially exist.

When she broaches the ultimate revelation of the Area 51 bible, it’s her focus on the humanity of everyone involved that makes it hit hardest. It’s more or less what I expected, but seeing it in print is something else. The kinds of things you would hope would be left to science fiction, and implausible fiction at that.

But no. The truth of a thing outweighs the fiction. And that’s just the one pixel. Who can imagine the rest?

In sum: this is the book about Dreamland I always wanted to read. You discover that the fantastic is true, but the fantastic is human, and the worst sins are our own.