About the Book:
Area 51
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.
About the Author:
Annie Jacobsen is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine and an investigative reporter whose work has also appeared in The National Review andThe Dallas Morning News. Her two-part series The Road to Area 51 was one of the most read in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles
with her husband and two sons.
My Opinion:
The first thing I said to my husband after I read this book was that I wished I could have crawled back into my little cave of naivetee. I was a child during the Cold War and I am really not happy to now know about all the bombs that were blown up in the cause of “testing.” Or to know that planes were just flying around full of nuclear bombs so that if anything happened between the US and Russia a “first strike” was assured.
And these are supposedly the smart people running the countries?
Seems to me that there is way too much ego involved in both country running and our military’s upper echelon’s .At least according to Mrs. Jacobsen’s research; and that research is quite detailed. She had access to people and places that reporters do not often do.
Since I went into this book with a limited knowledge of the politics of the time and the whole nuclear program I found this to be a very interesting book for the most part. I only found it to slow a bit as it moved into the present. A lot of what was covered regarding the last 15 years or so has been TVed and interneted into my brain ad nauseum.
The earlier bits though fascinated and horrified. I found myself unable at times to stop reading or pick up my jaw. The supplied answer to the “alien” crash at Roswell about made me sick. No, I am not going to spill the beans. If you want to know you will have to read the book. And yes, I believe the universe is much to big for us to be the only life in it.
I admit to a fascination, albeit slight with topics such as these and this book did not disappoint. The writing style is smooth and very easy to read and the author sure captured my interest. My only complaint and it is minor, is that at times it felt like a series of articles rather than a book but it did not make the whole any less fascinating to this Cold War novice.
With all due irony, you can find Area 51 on Facebook.
(I wonder if anyone looked for Jimmy Hoffa on Facebook?)
Area 51 is available at Amazon.com
Disclosure: I received a gratis copy of Area 51 from Hachette Books. Any opinions expressed are my honest opinions and were not impacted by my receipt of the free book. I received no monetary compensation for this post.
