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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Too weird and frightening to pass up...and funny!, June 29, 2007
This review is from: Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You're Not Supposed to Know About (Paperback)
This book is an outstanding guide to all the all-too-real top secret government-controlled spots in the United States, from underground bases, to nuclear testing sites, to creepy office buildings, to fortified areas built just to ensure "continuity of government" in case of an apocalypse.
It's well-written (with only the almost expected typos and tics of a first edition by a smaller publisher to mar it), funny, sarcastic, and interesting. It features maps, good driving directions, and lots and lots of very strange and interesting information.
It is NOT, as one of this book's more asinine reviewers has suggested, a handbook for terrorists full of privately obtained and otherwise unavailable information. Everything within its pages is from public files or from the author's own observations.
For New Mexico alone, my home state, I learned a ton that I had never known before---the Air Force Base in my hometown of Albuquerque has the world's largest wooden object in the world (?!) and more nuclear weapons than any other place in the country, a hippie was caught living in ca ve right on the property of Los Alamos National Labs, the residual radioactive materials at one of New Mexico's underground nuclear tests are considered to be a dangerous collection point for such materials by terrorists, and the UFO that Lonnie Zamora allegedly saw in Socorro, NM a couple of decades ago could have been a moon-landing device prototype....
(I would have liked to have seen something on WIPP though, and all that hidden nuclear waste....)
This was a great book. I'm glad I bought it, and I would recommend it to anyone---even to the guy who reviewed it here without actually reading it.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cool Book!, June 12, 2007
This review is from: Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You're Not Supposed to Know About (Paperback)
Normally I would never seek out books about such topics but having enjoyed the originality of many other titles from the same publisher, I figured Top Secret Tourism wouldn't be some stereotypical conspiracy theory of sorts (they're all out to get us!). Having actually read this book it is anything but that.
TST is highly informative and manages to do so in a manner that educates the total novice (like myself) while never talking over one's head; like assuming the reader is a nuclear physicist. I found Helms' style a joy to read, especially his sense of humor that manages to surface in each section: ("Since it would be illegal for the military to eavesdrop on civilian communications, this rumor is undoubtedly false").
The book is organized by states, with the "tourist spots" as subcategories. Each tourist spot is organized into sections ("What's There", "Key Facilities", "Secret Stuff", "Getting a Look Inside" ("No way in hell, forget it!"), "Unusual Facts", and "Getting There"- which has neat little road maps that are helpful enough to get you about as close as you desire. TST could even be used as a guide as to where NOT to go, or in choosing a home, to make sure you don't buy one next door to radioactive waste.
For those expecting a book that "takes their side" politically, that's not what TST is about. Obviously the top secret community exists no matter who's in the Oval Office. Some of it's reassuring to know (that maybe we have the technology not to LOSE a nuclear war), some is scary (worker and civilian cancer deaths from chemical exposure that got brushed off as coincidence), but most of all highly informative and interesting (did you know those parrot-like Furby toys are banned at the NSA?).
My only criticism would be the lack of pictures, but it becomes apparant why! Actually, after reading TST I realized maybe it's a good thing I paid cash at the bookstore, so "they" can't trace that I own it! Buy it before it gets banned by the nuts who think some pizza driver might actually use the info to sneak into a "continuity of government" facility 1000 feet underground or something.
I'd like to see a Volume 2 someday, even though it would probably contain locations of "lesser importance". I didn't see my state listed and I do know of an abandoned military testing ground nearby that may or may not be of "top secret" interest.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not really a travel guide, but entertaining, July 9, 2008
This review is from: Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You're Not Supposed to Know About (Paperback)
I expected a lot more from this book. It's not really a travel guide, although it does give crude maps and textual directions to each place. There are very few pictures, and most of those are for Area 51. The text is very entertaining though, but not very useful. Each site gets at least a couple pages, but there's nothing in-depth about any site. I'm not sure how much of the information comes from the author's experience visiting the sites and how much is just hearsay. He told only a few stories about his own experience, and I would have liked to read more of a travel diary about the author's experience going to each site, even if just to look from far away.
Although the book presents nothing that you can't legally get on your own, I would have liked to see an appendix listing the source material, contact information for public affairs officers, websites, and so on. There's no bibliography for further reading on any particular site. The book's best use is its table of contents. You're going to have to do more research on your own anyway.
At times the language is coarse and I think the book would have been better served without sarcasm, but I think the author was pandering to his audience. Some naïve politcal commentary creeps in as throw-away jokes, and might have been more appropriate if the author fleshed out the history a bit more.
Despite being disappointed in the marketing and categorization of the book, I did have a good time reading it, just like I occasionally need to watch a UFO show on TV.
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