From Publishers Weekly
Interstate 25 runs 1000 miles from the White Sands Missile Range (and Trinity, the first atomic bomb test site) in New Mexico to the high plains of Wyoming where 50 MX missile silos stand. In between lie numerous military installations and weapons research facilities. Bartimus and McCartney, reporters for the Associated Press, guide us through a stunning landscape in which instruments of massive death and destruction are manufactured and stored. Parts of the area are contaminated with radioactive waste; the authors note that weapons research and production yield four times more waste than commercial power plants. We see New Mexico ranchers who lost their land to the army, a Wyoming ranch wife who is in the forefront of the peace movement and missileers--men and women who work inside the silos--as well as Cheyenne Mountain, nerve center for NORAD, Rocky Flats (where plutonium triggers are made) and laser and Star Wars labs. This is a fascinating glimpse of an unusual intersection of nature and science with civilian and military life. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Interstate 25, dubbed "America's Nuclear Highway," runs for 1000 miles from New Mexico, where the first nuclear bomb was tested, to the Wyoming plains, where many of America's intercontinental ballistic missiles are still awaiting launching orders from Washington. In this book, which is both a travelog of the nuclear past and present and a sociological study of the people and places along this highway, the authors, both journalists, go into the homes of the people who work on the bomb or who simply live side by side with bunkers, silos, and the radioactive waste that threatens their health. While this cautionary tale of the continued dangers posed by nuclear weapons is an easy read, it is not superficial and will interest both general readers and nuclear specialists.
- Jennifer Scarlott, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Jennifer Scarlott, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
