Annie Jacobsen, born in 1967, is an American investigative journalist and author, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2016. Her beat is the hidden machinery of American power – war, weapons, security and secrets – and she has carried those instincts into television, writing for and producing programmes including Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and Clarice. Earlier in her career she was a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, from 2009 to 2012.
She is best known for Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, published in 2011, a book the New York Times memorably called “cauldron-stirring”. The phrase captures her reputation nicely: internationally acclaimed, occasionally controversial, and drawn to the stories officialdom would prefer to leave undisturbed. One critic has said she writes sensational books by tackling popular conspiracies head-on; her readers would call that precisely the appeal.
16 hours and 10 minutes
