Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51

Join us to welcome Aerospace historian Peter Merlin to talk about his book, Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 – the first ever scholarly history of the National Classified Test Facility at Groom Lake, Nevada.

Better known as Area 51, this top-secret installation hidden in a remote desert valley northwest of Las Vegas, has been shrouded in mystery since 1955. Decades of Cold War secrecy spawned rumors and conspiracy theories, and catapulted Area 51 into popular culture.

Now, after more than 30 years of painstaking research, Merlin cuts through the myths to reveal the true story of one of the nation’s premier flight-test and evaluation facilities, where evolving global threats are met with unprecedented technological innovations.

Peter Merlin is an aerospace historian and author of numerous books and articles. His research topics include Cold War history, space exploration, aerospace technology, human factors engineering, aviation archaeology, prehistoric cave paintings and petroglyphs, archeoastronomy, and the mysterious world of top-secret “black” projects. Merlin has appeared in more than a dozen film and television documentaries on the History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and others. Before joining the Aviation Management and Flight faculty at Southern Illinois University, he spent most of his career supporting flight research and testing under contract to NASA and the US Air Force.