Peter W. Merlin is an aerospace historian and author of numerous books, articles, and peer-reviewed research papers. His topics include Cold War history, space exploration, aerospace technology, human factors engineering, aviation archaeology, prehistoric cave paintings and petroglyphs, archaeoastronomy, and the mysterious world of top-secret “black” projects. His most recent book is Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51. Merlin has appeared in more than a dozen film and television documentaries on the History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and others. Before moving to academia and a teaching position at Southern Illinois University, he spent most of his career in the Southern California aviation industry with various positions under government contracts supporting NASA aeronautics research and Air Force flight test and evaluation.