Area 51 An uncensored history of America's top secret military base

Annie Jacobsen

Book - 2011

Presents a history of the most famous secret military installation in the world, assembled from interviews with the people who served there and formerly classified information.

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

001.942/Jacobsen
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 001.942/Jacobsen Checked In
Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Little, Brown & Co 2011.
Language
English
Main Author
Annie Jacobsen (-)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
xv, 523 p., [32] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (p. 391-505), filmography (p. 505-506), and index.
ISBN
9780316132947
  • Prologue: The Secret City
  • Chapter 1. The Riddle of Area 51
  • Chapter 2. Imagine a War of the Worlds
  • Chapter 3. The Secret Base
  • Chapter 4. The Seeds of a Conspiracy
  • Chapter 5. The Need-to-Know
  • Chapter 6. Atomic Accidents
  • Chapter 7. From Ghost Town to Boomtown
  • Chapter 8. Cat and Mouse Becomes Downfall
  • Chapter 9. The Base Builds Back Up
  • Chapter 10. Wizards of Science, Technology, and Diplomacy
  • Chapter 11. What Airplane?
  • Chapter 12. Covering Up the Cover-Up
  • Chapter 13. Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous Requires Drones
  • Chapter 14. Drama in the Desert
  • Chapter 15. The Ultimate Boys' Club
  • Chapter 16. Operation Black Shield and the Secret History of the USS Pueblo
  • Chapter 17. The MiGs of Area 51
  • Chapter 18. Meltdown
  • Chapter 19. The Lunar-Landing Conspiracy and Other Legends of Area 51
  • Chapter 20. From Camera Bays to Weapons Bays, the Air Force Takes Control
  • Chapter 21. Revelation
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Author Interviews and Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Even the most prosaic explanation of the oft-mythologized conspiratorial epicenter known as Area 51 can't resist flights of bizarre speculation, to judge by this wildly inconsistent expose. L.A. Times contributing editor Jacobsen (whose articles on Area 51 appeared in the paper's magazine) identifies the main business of the super-secret patch of Nevada desert as aerospace research, especially the development of the U-2 and A-12 spy-planes. A cross between The Right Stuff and The X Files, her absorbing history of the site shows us brilliant engineering, harrowing test-flights and crashes, paranoid security protocols, and vicious Air Force-vs.-CIA turf battles. Her rambling narrative often wanders away to other secret locales, including the Nevada Test Range and Area 52, where atom bombs and other infernal devices underwent trials. Drawing on interviews with ex-Area 51 staffers, the author's account of Area 51 and environs is thoroughly researched, lively, and quite sensible: she suggests that the base's odd-looking, high-flying, fast-moving experimental airplanes were the likely cause of associated UFO sightings. Unfortunately, Jacobsen then demolishes her own credibility by proposing a novel conspiracy theory-sourced mainly to a nameless engineer, it links the Roswell UFO incident to Soviet-built flying saucers and a grisly hoax cooked up by Stalin in which the "aliens" were human children created by Josef Mengele based on his gruesome human experimentation at Auschwitz. Her account makes Martian-invasion scenarios look downright plausible. Let the reader beware. Photos. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Review by Kirkus Book Review

Weird doings are afoot, aliens are among us and so is Raytheonall stories that figure inLos Angeles Times Magazinecontributing editor Jacobsen's supremely odd book on that most classified of American military installations.Acting on tips and leads by those who were there, the same kinds of fighter jocks and spam-in-a-can aeronauts that figure in Tom Wolfe'sThe Right Stuff, Jacobsen set out a few years ago to uncover what could be uncovered about Area 51, the huge military/intelligence base in the desert of southern Nevada. Huge is rightit's "just a little smaller than the state of Connecticut"and it's carved into subdomains so secret that one agency, whether the CIA or the Air Force or the Atomic Energy Commission, often doesn't know what the next one is doing. Indeed, Vice President Johnson didn't know about Area 51 until after he became presidentand we can guess that Joe Biden hasn't been briefed on the odd things that happen there. Famously, as Jacobsen notes, Area 51 has been associated with UFOs, and some of the earliest sightings thereof, beginning in 1947, have taken place in or near the facility. As for the spooky-faced aliens so beloved ofX-Filesfans and so feared by the Whitley Strieber fans in the audience? Well, the big news in Jacobsen's book is...no, it'd be stealing her thunder, and perhaps inviting a probe, to say much in specific, except to say that the grays are real, if tinged red. Jacobsen's expansive, well-written narrative takes in the sweep of Cold War history, from the Bay of Pigs to Francis Gary Powers to Joe Stalin to Vietnam to the Nazi doctors pressed into service by U.S. and USSR alikeand none of it is pretty.As readers will see, it'll be hard to double-check Jacobsen's reporting, so leaps of faith are required. But Jacobsen provides an endlessly fascinatingand quite scarybook.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.