American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War

From 1951 to 1963, the U.S. government conducted atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in Nevada without regard to the effect of radioactive fallout on humans, livestock and the environment. In the late 1950s, birth defects and deaths from cancer began to soar among civilian and military test-site workers and their newborn children, and among ``downwinders'' living in Nevada, Utah and other western states. Gallagher, a professional photographer, spent several years interviewing and photographing these nuclear-test victims and gathering evidence of official indifference, callousness and outright cover-ups. The sheer density of suffering depicted here is awesome; in certain Utah towns, for instance, Gallagher found cases of cancer in every house. The bitter, stoic testimony of the victims (many of whom have since died), accompanied by Gallagher's photographic portraits of them, is deeply disturbing and exposes a major national scandal. Photos. (Apr.)