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

"Finished the book, and I did not care for it for a few main reasons. I cannot believe how much attention this garbage is getting. The parts about the U2 and A12/SR71 were for the most part pretty good, but much had been already written there. However, she was off base overall for a couple main reasons:

1. For some reason she talked a lot about the Nevada Test Site and clearly had not done much research on it as many statements were factually wrong. She greatly exaggerates the nuclear rocket test stories and Project 57 and makes them sound far worse than they are. There are documents available to the public that show exactly what went on with both of these and she even sourced a few but chose to rely on bar stories instead to discount official accurate records. She had a horrible map drawn up in the front of the book when she could have gotten a better one anywhere.

2. Which brings me to the next major flaw. She relied too much on stories from people that were not verifiable, even when her notes show she had better sources to use for much of the information.

3. She totally lost all credibility when she presented as fact the whole Roswell was a Russian craft and the aliens were created by Mengele. All of it was presented as fact and credited to only an interview with an anonymous EG&G engineer. She started and finished the book with this ridiculous theory that even UFO researches and non believers would buy. The focus on this tainted the whole book in my opinion. I believe she thought she had found the Deep Throat of Roswell when really either it was someone pulling her leg, or someone deliberately trying to discredit her to make the rest of the book credible.

So let's get into specifics. On top of the Roswell garbage she presents, she has so many trivial yet easily recognizable facts incorrect that it also tainted the whole book. For example:

She states that the US got V-2 rockets from Pennemunde, this is not true as the Soviets captured that base. The V-2s w got were from plants in western Germany.

She states that the Nevada Test Site encompassed 1,350 acres and she repeated that on NPR. Well I don't know how an editor let that go by since thats only TWO SQUARE MILES. 1350 square miles is the correct statement.

She says the first atomic bomb exploded on US soil was at the NTS in 1951. What about the Trinity test in New Mexico in 1945?

She seems to want to equate a "safety test" or a nuclear reactor test with a nuclear explosion. They are not the same.

Area 51 was not named such because it was in 1951. This of course if from her suspicious source. The areas were all parceled out in 1950 and there are plenty of documents showing how and why it was done the way it was.

She states that Czar Nicholas was shot in 1918, setting off the Russian Revolution. The Revolution was well under way by 1918.

She rants about why the DOE would change their name 4 times in 60 years if there was nothing to hide instead of understanding that the mission of the Manhattan Project - AEC - DOE has changed over the years and the name was changed to reflect that. She says the FBO only changed their name once. Well pretty much it has been a federal bureau that has performed investigations since it started.

Just a few little errors but they point to faulty research overall which makes anything else in the book suspect.

To be fair the parts on the U2, SR-71 and some other aircraft testing and some of the cold war spy flight stories were interesting (two stars worth only) but not enough to make up for the ridiculous Roswell theory the book starts and ends with and they are even tainted with some doubt because of the other errors and overly dramatic storytelling.

The story of Area 51 and the Nevada Test Site are fascinating enough without embellishment and relying on bar stories. If you want a good Area 51 book get Dreamland by Phil Patton. It is based on facts and when speculation is made, he clearly states that.

For all you who give this 5 stars for who knows why please do some of your own research. You can easily find better information on the Nevada Test Site, the nuclear rocket program, Project 57, etc than you will get from this book. If you want a history of Area 51, get Dreamland, if you want spy plane stories, get "By Any Means Necessary" by Burrows, for nuclear rocket stuff get Dewar's "To The End Of The Solar System"."

I agree with the first reviewer, Foster, VS: I'm sorry I wasted time and money on this book. It's not just Jacobsen's breathless, sophomoric, 'Gosh-I-bet-you-didn't-know-that!' style that's irritating, there are, as Mr. Foster says, factual errors as well. I can't add much to what he has to say, because I doubt I am as well-informed on Area 51 literature as he is, but at least a couple of Jacobsen's arguments struck me as based on incomplete, biased or ignored information. One, on P. 72, is where she characterizes Capt. J. Edward Ruppelt (not 'Lt. E. J. Ruppelt' in her rendering) as an air Force stooge sent to rebuff ufologists and keep them away from the USAF's own UFO-related research in Project Blue book. In fact, Ruppelt was a much more complex personality than portrayed here and was genuinely concerned with developing objective, scientific criteria for evaluating UFO sightings - a fact that left him deeply disappointed with the dismissive attitude of the 1953 CIA-backed Robertson Panel - referred to by Jacobsen on P. 207, but without any cross-reference to Ruppelt. She also claims, on P.376, that 'Stalin had spies inside the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who had been providing him with bomb blueprints and other information since 1941,' implying that the Soviets had methodically planted agents there, whereas David Greenglass, Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall acted at least partly on their own volition, approaching Soviet representatives as much as they were themselves approached - Stalin just got lucky. These and other misrepresentations make 'Area 51' a pretty frustrating read - and, as Mr. Foster points out, the final hypothesis (because that's all it is) about the debris at Roswell being a Russian flying-saucer containing the bodies of child-pilots developed by Nazi eugenicist Josef Megele is total nonsense.

very good book,very well researched,lots of facts and revelations,i would recommend this book to any one remotely interested in area 51