AMERICAN GROUND ZERO: THE SECRET NUCLEAR WAR

AMERICAN GROUND ZERO: THE SECRET NUCLEAR WAR Carole Gallagher (MIT Press, $39.95) A Dorothea Lange for the atom age, photographer Carole Gallagher left New York in 1983 to spend seven years in six western states interviewing and photographing radiation victims-many now dead-of the atomic testing conducted in Nevada from 1951 to 1963 under the aegis of the Atomic Energy Commission. In this shocking yet non-sensationalist oral history, unwitting guinea pigs- both military and civilian-tell of epidemic illness, sterility, birth defects, and federal harassment of victims who pleaded for compensation. The book illustrates the irony that the U.S. military's experimentation with bombs many times the magnitude of Hiroshima has resulted in the nuking of one country-our own. A+ -Margot Mifflin