Includes bibliographical references (p. [283]-308) and index.

The adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer's road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and CIA "black ops" sites. Geographer-artist Trevor Paglen's research into areas that officially "don't exist" leads him on a globe-trotting adventure into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empire--the unmarked spots on a map where our military conducts its most clandestine operations. Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire's annual budget is over $40 billion, yet almost no one knows how it works or what it does. Whether it's from a hotel room in Vegas, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Central American jungles, Washington suburbs, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, Paglen's reporting is impassioned, rigorous, relentless, and eye-opening. This is an exposâe of a world that, officially, isn't even there.--From publisher description.

Facts on the ground : Berkeley -- A guy in the classified world : an Air Force base in California -- Unexplored territory : downtown Las Vegas -- Wastelands : basin and range -- Classified resumes : Mojave Desert -- Fiat lux : Alamogordo, New Mexico -- The other night sky : a few miles north of the U.S. frontier -- The observer effect : 3,000 km altitude, 63.4 degrees inclination -- Blank spots in the law : Berkeley and Las Vegas revisited -- The precedent : Robins Air Force Base, near Macon, Georgia -- Money behind mirrored walls : Farm Credit Drive, Washington, D.C., suburbs -- Nonfunding the black world : United States Capitol, Washington, D.C., 20515 -- Plains of death : outside Tegucigalpa, Honduras -- Anything you need anywhere : Aguacate -- Bobs : Kabul -- Screaming their heads of : in the dark, around the world.