The myths of August

This is a devastating - but in the end hopeful - expose of America's atomic adventures from Hiroshima to the present, written by a former congressman, Secretary of the Interior, and longtime lawyer for victims of radiation exposure.

With Hiroshima, the atomic age was born. But for an untold number of Americans, the brave new world that it was supposed to usher in became instead a world in which war, disease, and unnecessary death were common. In the name of "safeguarding" the nation from the Soviets, the United States knowingly exposed millions of its citizens to toxic radiation.

Stewart Udall was one of the first lawyers to champion the cause of these Americans, and this extraordinary book is a result of that work. He takes us into the deserts where the tests were conducted, and to the ranches and towns where fallout killed thousands of animals and triggered epidemics of childhood leukemia. He introduces us to the widows of the Navajo men who developed cancer while mining uranium.

He illuminates the ways in which "the cold warriors' contempt for restraint" poisoned our nation's politics as it poisoned its people. He reveals the human face associated with the arms race, and suggests how, with candor and just compensation, we can hasten the country's return to the principles that have always been its definition.