AREA 51 - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

Best pick for "vicarious summer travel" by The New York Times Sunday Book Review.

"....CHILLING DEPICTIONS...a dream for aviation and military buffs."

    —Scott Martelle, Los Angeles Times

“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 alike—and none of it is pretty…Jacobsen provides an endlessly fascinating—and quite scary—book.”

    —Kirkus Reviews

This book is a work of non-fiction. The stories in the narrative are real. Of the seventy-four individuals interviewed for this book—all with rare, firsthand knowledge of the secret base—thirty-two of them lived and worked at Area 51.

Area 51 is the most secretive, domestic military facility in the United States. 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 lakebed called Groom Lake. The government has never admitted it exists.

Because everything that goes on at Area 51 is classified top secret when it is happening, this is a book about secrets. About government projects and operations that have been hidden for decades—some for good reason, others for arguably terrible ones, and one that should have never happened at all. These operations took place in the name of national security and they all involved cutting edge science.

Area 51 is a riddle. In this book, the enigmatic true story of Area 51 is finally told.