..........Weird. Ok let me explain from the beginning. My Mission: To begin collecting and reading books about my internal affliction and irrational obsession with the infamous Area 51. My Goal: To learn as much as my human brain will allow me too at the time. (Seeing as to how we only have access and use only a small percentage of our brain, on this earthly realm of ours.) After doing some searching I decided my first book would be "Area 51" by Annie Jacobsen. Reasons being it was new, (published in 2011) and the reviews and descriptions describe it as a timeline of Area 51. Starting from the picking of the perfect place,(Groom Lake) all the way through the construction phase (that still seems to be going on), and interviews with people that actually worked there and how they get there (Janet), and so on up to the present. Most all can be discussed now because of our kind government's declassification of some of the OLD documents. (some they can't deny anymore after getting sued)
**I also invented a new drinking game while reading this book. Directions: Everytime the author has to write/use
the qoute "On A Need To Know Basis" when talking about anything security at Area 51, TAKE A SHOT OR SIP OF COCKTAIL OF CHOICE. Guarentee want take but a few minutes and you probably want remember the rest of the night, but don't worry, in the morning the hangover will remind you!.
The book also made me change one of my main opinions about the Roswell Incident. Now I am thinking it was a spy plane shaped like some kind of capsule, built by the Horton Brothers, and thats why they didn't want us to know because they did not want to admit that the other side was way more advance'd than we were in aeronautic department.
I would also like to say how weird it made me feel to know that they took foreign Scientist (Many worked for Hitler) brought them to Area 51, and put them to work with nuclear weapons and Top Secret Operations. I know if I were taken prisoner by another country and put to work developing machines and weapons that could cause Mass Destruction and destroy my homeland as well, I'm pretty sure "not working to my full potential" and "not exactly doing it correctly" is an Understatement.(Only one episode speaks of this happening in the book by a Russian Scientist.
So Finally, Please let me know how this book made you feel and if you have any suggestion's on books that would be great for my mission! I hope you enjoyed my thread and look forward to conversing with you!!

I checked that book out at the library, couldnt finish it all. Just somehing strange about a book about topic secret information advertised in the very front of the library. Also it downplays the alien agenda rightly or wrongly, im undecided on that point but that is what i wanted to read about.

I read most of this book

I hopped around a bit reading things that interested me most

One thing stood out -- there are some seriously insane 'scientists' out there

eg
They were planning to send an enormous rocket into space that was powered by injecting liquid hydrogen directly into a nuclear reactor -- they tested this 'rocket motor" at area 51 -- spewing massive amounts of radiation into the atmophere

And to further really prove their insanity they intentionaly allowed it to blow up -- yes that's right they intentionally shut off the hydrogen cooling to see how bad the explosion would be -- pretty bad

(an aside here -- this was basically a reactor not too different from an electrical power plant except that there was no containment just an open nozzle at the top to allow the super heated hydrogen to exit. When it overheated it blew up -- just like the Fukshima reactors -- this tells me that the Navy knew that the Fukushima reactors would blow -- no doubt that is why the Navy evacuated the Atsugi base in Japan)

Oh and they also intentionally dropped a nuclear bomb out of a plane that was not armed to see how bad the nuclear contamination would be and how big of an area would be contaminated -- then they just left it there

Also as a pilot I found the information about the Oxcart (SR71) was fascinating

seems they lost at least 2 of those (I did not know that)

Jacobsen's book is full of factual errors as well as evidence of her fear and misunderstanding of nuclear issues. I wont go into all of the problems with her book right now, but I will address a few issues.

First of all, there were no nuclear tests (explosions, rockets, etc.) at Area 51. The nuclear engine tests took place at Area 25 (Jackass Flat) near the southern end of the Nevada Test Site. You can see the test stands today from Highway 95. I have toured the entire area several times, including the test stands. Yes, a small rocket engine reactor was intentionally blown up for the purpose of measuring radiation levels for accident modeling, and to develop clean-uptechniques. Remember, this is the Nevada Test Site where both above ground and underground full-scale nuclear explosions took place, along with numerous smaller radiation experiments. The small reactor explosion would have been relatively inconsequential.

And they did not intentionally drop an unarmed nuclear bomb to see how bad the contamination would be, "and then just left it there." That is nonsense. Project 57 - which took place in Area 13, about 5 miles northwest of Groom Lake - involved an XW-25 warhead on a fixed test stand. A single detonator was fired, destroying the device and contaminating a a previously defined test area that was then used for developing clean-up techniques. The results also provided information on potential nuclear weapon accidents, and allowed trained responders to practice containment and decontamination.

Project OXCART was the A-12, not the SR-71. Evolutionary variants of the A-12 included the YF-12, M-21, and SR-71. A total of 50 airframes were built including thirteen A-12s (one was a trainer), three YF-12s, two M-21s, and thrity-two SR-71s (three were trainers). Of these, a total of 20 were lost in accidents including five A-12s, two YF-12s, one M-21, and twelve SR-71s. I have visited eight of the crash sites.

There are some good articles on dreamlandresort.com if you are looking for general information, photos, etc.. If you want a book, there is a new Area 51 title from Arcadia Publishing that includes a detailed historical overview and over 200 photos.

The Area 51 veterans group, Roadrunners Internationale, also has a web site with many first-hand stories from people who actually worked there.

I started reading this book, I had forgotten until I saw your thread listing. I found there was information I hadn't come across before, but then again, I've never focused specifically on area 51 as an interest. The Horton brothers section is interesting, and it is nice to see a new take on an old event. However, it never made much sense vis a vis the actual capabilities of the craft: if the machine was able to penetrate straight into one of the most sensitive military installations deep in the U.S., why wasn't it used again? What happened to it? Why didn't the Soviets make immense fleets of the craft and dominate the world?

I found she often meandered off into seemingly inconsequential areas, large digressions; the book seemed to lack any central focus. Then again, like I said, I never finished it. There did seem to be a lot of information, which in itself I appreciate. Perhaps I ll give it another go one of these days.

I forced myself to read Jacobsen's book twice. On the second pass, I went over the text page by page to identify factual errors. I found more than three dozen, and other readers (with different subject matter expertise) have since pointed out additional errors.

In a review shortly after publication, authors and Cold War historians Robert S. Norris and Jeffrey T. Richelson described the book as "deeply flawed, and noted that "All too often, Jacobsen’s history of the activities that did occur at the facility is filled with errors of commission and omission. One has to wonder what role her editors played in overseeing this book, and why so many mistakes and preposterous claims survived editorial review."

They charged that "Jacobsen’s command of nuclear history and science is almost non-existent. There are so many mistakes that it is hard to know where to begin."

Aviation writers Jeannette Remak and Joseph Ventolo Jr. had this to say: "Her book is fraught with errors and not recommended reading for anyone serious about Cold War history, UFO and Aviation research, Black programs, and the men and women that participated in them."

This is just covering the basic historical errors. Jacobsen's ridiculous new Roswell tale is a whole other kettle of fish. Numerous authors, historians, and analysts have since thoroughly dissected this bit of fantasy that was supplied to Jacobsen by an elderly nuclear weaponeer who apparently never even worked at Area 51.

Dwayne Day, a frequent writer on overhead reconnaissance history and a senior program officer for the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board at the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences traced the origins of this bizarre tale to a 1956 short story by James Blish that was published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The story, "Tomb Tapper," is about a mysterious Russian craft that crashes and is mistaken for an alien spacecraft. It is piloted by a genetically engineered child whose body is recovered from the wreckage. The parallels between the story related by Jacobsen's source and the Blish sci-fi story are impossible to ignore.

In a review for the Washington Post, historian Richard Rhodes criticized Jacobsen's investigative reporting skills: "In attributing the stories she reports to an unnamed engineer and Manhattan Project veteran while seemingly failing to conduct even minimal research into the man’s sources, Jacobsen shows herself at a minimum extraordinarily gullible or journalistically incompetent."

I downloaded the audio book thoroughly enjoyed but the tale of Stalin sending cutting edge technology piloted by butchered children goes beyond absurd. Why give away stealth, levitation and hyper-sonic abilities to your enemy just instill fear into their population? It's barking mad and she would have been better to leave that chapter out altogether.