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| American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War | 
 enlarge | Author: Carole Gallagher
Creator: Keith Schneider
Publisher: The MIT Press
Category: Book
List Price: $65.00
Buy Used: $9.95
You Save: $55.05 (85%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 695189
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 461
Shipping Weight (lbs): 5.3
Dimensions (in): 10.4 x 10.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0262071460
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.179
EAN: 9780262071468
ASIN: 0262071460
Publication Date: March 10, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
American Ground Zero is the extraordinary product of one photojournalist's decade-long commitment, a gripping, courageous collection of portraits and interviews of those whose lives were crossed by radioactive fallout. For twelve years beginning in 1951, the United States government conducted above ground testing of nuclear weapons in the deserts of Nevada. For more than four decades it has tried to cover up the human and environmental devastation wrought by this testing. In American Ground Zero, Carole Gallagher has penetrated the veil of official secrecy and anonymity to document the incredible untold story of the Americans whose misfortune it was to live downwind of the nuclear detonations - those citizens described in a top-secret Atomic Energy Commission memo as "a low-use segment of the population" - and of civilian workers and military personnel exposed to radiation at the Nevada Test Site. The above ground nuclear testing was "the most prodigiously reckless program of scientific experimentation in United States history," Keith Schneider notes in his foreword to the book. Many of its 126 fallout clouds floated across the American West and eastward with radiation levels comparable to those released at Chernobyl. Yet residents of the downwind areas were consistently told that there was no danger, and were even encouraged to "participate in a moment of history" by coming out to watch these fallout clouds drifting over their homes. Abandoning her career as a successful New York photographer, Carole Gallagher moved to Utah in 1983 and spent the next seven years networking among radiation survivors' groups and finding people willing to be photographed and tell their story. She covered six downwind states in all, including Test Site workers and atomic veterans. The result is a striking gallery of the undecorated casualties of an undeclared war. Never exploitative, Gallagher's photographs only rarely convey the subjects' considerable physical sufferings: instead, they invite the viewer to witness the beauty and value in these ordinary lives. Carole Gallagher is a photographer whose work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world. She is currently living in New York City.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Should be required reading in every school!!! June 15, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've read and reread this book so many times I've lost count. In addition I've loaned it out to multiple friends just to get them to open their eyes. Each time I read it I'm still amazed at the liberties taken by the military during this period of time. There is so much important information here I could never even scratch the surface in a short review. The poignant stories told by the victims of these nuclear tests (mostly patriotic mormons who felt the govt. could do no wrong) will move you emotionally, besides backing up Gallaghers claims. If you consider yourself a patriot, prepare to have your world shaken. Just buy it, you wont be sorry.
a very compelling set of stories and B&W photographs... April 19, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I'm a science writer, and I was conducting some research at the M.I.T. library regarding the 1962 series of nuclear tests at Johnston Island in the Pacific. Mostly I was seeking highly technical information -- but I saw this volume sitting on the shelf next to the monographs I was reviewing, so I took what I originally intended to be a quick glance.
After several hours' reading of "American Ground Zero", I found myself quite upset, for this collection of highly credible, first-person accounts clearly demonstrates ongoing efforts of the federal government to ignore, downplay -- even falsify -- data regarding the atomic testing of the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s, particularly the atmospheric tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas up through 1962.
In today's debate regarding DOE's Yucca Mountain Project, the credibility of the federal government and its experts is a big issue in Nevada. This volume shows why -- through first-hand accounts and compelling photography, presented with the perspective of subsequent time. (Yucca mountain is an underground facility located on a corner of the old Nevada Test Site, and it is to become the nation's primary repository for high-level nuclear waste.)
For at least fifteen years, I have been following in the scientific literature the research & development of Yucca mountain. My own feelings on the matter had been ambivalent for high-level waste must be stored somewhere. Recently, I had become concerned with revelations regarding falsification of data by DOE employees and its contractors.
However, in one fell swoop -- this book completely persuaded me to the righteousness of the cause of those many Nevadans who oppose Yucca mountain. It clearly shows that Nevadans (along with residents of Utah and other downwind states) have already suffered far beyond their fair share of the nation's nuclear burden.
Sadly, the sacrifice of these citizens is not only largely unacknowledged today -- this work clearly shows that their earlier "cooperation" was concurrent with misrepresentations by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the predecessor to today's Department of Energy (DOE), as well as by various military authorities.
Many of the individuals profiled in this volume are (were) former employees of the AEC and its contractors, or are (were) military veterans who participated in these atomic tests. Their accounts all seem to have one common thread -- that there were repeated efforts by authorities to downplay, or ignore, radioactive releases and associated health effects from both above- and below-ground nuclear tests.
The author, Carole Gallagher, deserves our nation's appreciation for documenting so eloquently the experiences of these otherwise ordinary citizens and bringing them to our collective attention. Unfortunately, their living testimonies and images are quickly passing...
Gallagher's book is conduit for voices of the downwinders February 25, 2002
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I grew up in Northern Arizona on the Utah border. Living close to St George and Cedar City, Utah, we heard rumors of families with unusually high incidents of leukemia and other cancers and the ensuing speculation about the cause. Gallagher's compilation of stories supplies the most human view of the downwinders. She documents a dark and frightening chapter in our goverment's history. Most compelling were the stories of the workers at the test site who were not even afforded the pretense of protection from exposure. I would have appreciated additional focus on the effects of the testing on the Native American tribes in Utah and Northern Arizona. Gallagher has given us a treasure by documenting the stories of radiation exposure victims who deserve to have their stories told. Once started, I could not stop reading this book and found myself studying each photograph for several minutes before reading the accompanying story. Thank you Ms. Gallagher for leaving your New York roots, succuming to the fashion dictates of southern Utah and permitting yourself to become the blank slate upon which these stories were etched.
Should be required reading in every school! December 6, 2001
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've read and reread this book so many times I've lost count. In addition I've loaned it out to multiple friends just to get them to open their eyes. Each time I read it I'm still amazed at the liberties taken by the military during this period of time. There is so much important information here I could never even scratch the surface in a short review. The poignant stories told by the victims of these nuclear tests (mostly patriotic mormons who felt the govt. could do no wrong) will move you emotionally, besides backing up Gallaghers claims. If you consider yourself a patriot, prepare to have your world shaken. Just buy it, you wont be sorry.
Compassionately denying one's ability to hide truth. June 5, 1999
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
I have had this book for two years. Reading it completely 9 times and countless partial times. Gallagher in her effort "to become a blank slate upon which the stories could be written" has embodied the voice of a people not just a position of personal opinion. Hearing that voice cause's the reader to open there eye's to the stark reality of what "we the people" have allowed to happen. Revealing just how fast the holocost of the WWII was pushed out of the conscientious of the people. Allowing the same mentality that drove the Nazi's, to develope in the country "were that could not happen". Without a doubt this "work" is not for the light hearted. Reality with weight, forces the reader to think. Cause's the reader to question not only the government structure and poilcy's we have let be set but the moral code by which we justify a means to a end. How do you determine who live's and who dies? What and Who determines the worth of a human being? You will be challanged, morally, and emotionally. Carole Gallagher has painted people, words, and pictures together in a way that you will not shake off anytime soon. Personal stories will bury themselve's deep into your heart and mind. You will hear the echoed cry's of a people for which there was no justice, no hope. The bottom line reality is we let it happen. This is "the wake up call" Gallagher presents the reader with. It is very disturbing wake up call.
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