New edition of Ackland's book available

The recent paperback edition of Len Ackland's Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2002, picks up where the hardcover edition left off in 1999.

Readers learn more about a recent study of workers poisoned at the Rocky Flats nuclear bomb factory located 16 miles from Denver, said Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism. They learn that the 10-square-mile site where the factory buildings sat is going to become a national wildlife refuge, despite continuing controversy about the cleanup levels for radiological and other toxic waste at the facility. And they recognize that the most enduring and potentially devastating legacy of Rocky Flats resides in the nuclear weapons that were manufactured there and still exist in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The history of Rocky Flats is a case study of this country's nuclear weapons enterprise, and the lessons that emerge from this history remain to be learned. Making a Real Killing should be read by anyone concerned about the Bush administration's threat, in its national strategy statements, to use nuclear weapons even as it decries their possible possession by Iraq, North Korea and other nations. The Cold War has ended, but the Nuclear Age is far from over.