Area 51

by Annie Jacobsen

[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.