Reviews for The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West

The average rating for The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-16 00:00:00 Cras Ghjkjh How do deserts become "wastelands"? How did parts of each of the five deserts in the US become part of the largest militarized zone on the planet? Worse, how did these indigenous homelands become a "nuclear landscape"? Erudite examination of the environmental impacts of nuclear activities in the American West and of the differing ways that Native Americans (mostly Paiute & Shoshone) imagine and occupy these lands compared to the ways nuclear scientists and military people use the land. Also explores the process of determining whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada will serve as a deep geologic burial site for nuclear waste. (Book was written in 1997; incredibly the project is still fitfully being worked upon after many stops and starts.) Kuletz lays out the competing claims to these lands by Native Americans, antinuclear activists, Euro- American scientists, and government officials.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-05-08 00:00:00 Karriem Allah This book concerns the construction of the Nuclear West and its social and environmental effects. We typically do not hear about the populations that nuclear weapons development and testing impacts. Kuletz provides an inside perspective. She grew up as the daughter of a scientist at a test site, has done extensive background research, and interviewed Native Americans to record their struggles.