Trinity's Children: Living Along America's Nuclear Highway

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. (Nov.)