Reviewed by BL Kennedy
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base Annie Jacobson
Hachette Book Group
New York, NY
521 pgs
$27.99
ISBN: 978-0-316-13294-7
The Secret City
This book is a work of nonfiction. The stores I tell in this narrative are real. None of the people are invented. Of the seventy four individuals interviewed for this for this book with rare firsthand knowledge of the secret base, thirty-two of them lived and worked at Area 51.
Area 51 is the nation’s most secret domestic military facility. It is located in the high desert of southern Nevada, seventy five miles north of Las Vegas. Its facilities have been constructed over the past sixty years around a flat, dry lake bed called Groom Lake. The U.S. government has never admitted it exists. There is a quote in Annie Jacobson’s book, an old gypsy quote that I’m going to paraphrase which goes something like this: “you are not really dead until the last person who knows you dies.” I kind of like that; it makes me kind of reflect upon how lucky I have been to live the life I have in reviewing books as well as writing and publishing over these many years. Okay, now back to the review. Enough of this stupid reminiscing.
Like Roswell, Area 51 has become the stuff of legend. Whether or not a UFO crashed at Roswell, whether or not alien bodies were discovered and shipped off to Wright Patterson Air Force Base where they sat in some hangar for several years before being shipped off to Nevada in 1951 is all part of legend and speculation. In fact, I kind of like the idea that the supposed crashed UFO and alien bodies were shipped to Nevada in 1951, and that’s how area 51 got its name. That’s just one of the many little tidbits that Annie Jacobson drops in this massive 500 plus page book,
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. Actually, all the Roswell stuff is just kind of an add-on at the end of the book. And, I might add, one of the most frightening books I have ever read in my life, and its not because of crashed UFOs or aliens: that is a totally different ballgame. Truth be told, the parcel of land near Groom Lake, Nevada that has become known as Area 51 was purchased by the Atomic Energy Commission with the sole purpose of above ground and below ground atomic testing to see what the effects of radioactive fallout would be on the residents of Nevada and Utah. This is not only frightening, but it is fact. The whole flying saucer, CIA, spy plane, whatever you call it that Area 51 is known for today is the tip of the iceberg, and didn’t begin until 1956, when the CIA got involved. Before then, whatever it was that crashed at Roswell stayed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base until 1951, when it was shipped over by military UPS to the Atomic Energy Commission for supposed reverse engineering. Could you believe this shit? This is sicker than the sickest science fiction I’ve ever read in my life.
We have speculation going on in this book by Ms. Jacobson, who, don’t get me wrong, is a very, very good writer and holds many honors (she writes for Los Angeles Times Magazine and she is a graduate of Princeton University). Somehow, she has managed to conveniently locate seventy some odd former employees at Area 51, who have now talked to her, because the projects they have been working on all these years have finally been declassified.
I don’t know what to think here. I don’t know if our government is using Ms. Jacobson and filling her with disinformation, or if they are prepping her for a position within the secret government itself. What I do know is that the Atomic Energy Commission did indeed use the Groom Lake area (a.k.a. Area 51), for atomic testing throughout the 1950’s. In fact, its well documented that they used to have atomic bomb parties in Las Vegas, and people at casinos were invited to come out and watch the explosions. We know that the entire cast and crew of the John Wayne movie “The Conqueror” filmed near the Groom Lake Area died of cancer.
Annie Jacobson fills us up with tons of facts. For example, most historians are familiar with Operation Paperclip, in which the United States created new identities for Nazi scientists and smuggled them into this country. We’re talking about People like Wernher Von Braun and other Nazi scientists, whose files are still classified as of 2011. Let’s face it, these people created our space program. I think its kind of funny that if not for the Nazis, Neil Armstrong would have never walked on the moon. One very interesting story early on in the book tells about Von Braun in America, testing one of the first missiles in New Mexico, and almost blowing up the city of El Paso, Texas. This is a very frightening book, and if you’re paranoid about our government, this will make you even more paranoid. If you’re anti nuclear, I suggest you turn off the lights and see if you glow in the dark. This is a scary, scary book, and it is a book that I suggest all thinking Americans read.
Available on
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