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

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

by Annie Jacobsen

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History & Foreign AffairsSociety & Culture

About 75 miles from Las Vegas sits a base whose Cold War history, from nuclear testing to the U-2 and A-12 Oxcart, outstrips the myths in Jacobsen's telling. Her Roswell account, a Stalin and Josef Mengele plot from one anonymous source, is another matter. How much can you check, when Richard Rhodes called the reporting error-ridden?

Core ideas
  • Built on witnesses: Nineteen former base workers, aged 75 to 92, were interviewed, plus 55 other military, intelligence and scientific figures.
  • Secrets from each other: The CIA, Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission each ran projects knowing little of the others, a habit traced to the Manhattan Project.
  • MiGs in the desert: Programs included reverse engineering Soviet MiG-21 fighters, and Francis Gary Powers and the Bay of Pigs appear.
Published2011
Pages540
ISBN9780316132947
ReadMay 2024

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