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Photo by Jay Adkins
"What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Plus the facts are solid and the science told in colloquial but never dumbed-down terms. If I could afford them, I'd want the movie rights. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristen Iversen's Full Body Burden may be a classic of nuclear literature, filling a gap we didn't know existed among Hersey's Hiroshima, Burdick and Wheeler's Fail-Safe and Kohn's Who Killed Karen Silkwood?"
--MARK HERTSGAARD, author of Nuclear Inc. and HOT
“Full Body Burden is one of the most important stories of the nuclear era—as personal and powerful as Silkwood, told with the suspense and narrative drive of The Hot Zone. With unflinching honesty, Kristen Iversen has written an intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security. Rocky Flats needs to be part of the same nuclear discussion as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. So does Full Body Burden. It’s an essential and unforgettable book that should be talked about in schools and book clubs, online and in the White House.
--REBECCA SKLOOT, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
"This terrifyingly brilliant book - as perfectly crafted and meticulously assembled as the nuclear bomb triggers that lie at its core - is a savage indictment of the American strategic weapons industry, both haunting in its power, and yet wonderfully, charmingly human as a memoir of growing up in the Atomic Age."
--SIMON WINCHESTER, author of The Professor and the Madman and Atlantic
"Kristen Iversen has written a hauntingly beautiful memoir that is also a devastating investigation into the human costs of building and living with the atomic bomb. Poignant and gracefully written, Iversen shows us what it meant to come of age next door to Rocky Flats—America’s plutonium bomb factory. The story is at once terrifying and outrageous."
--KAI BIRD, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
"Kristen Iversen’s ingenious fusion of these two tales: her family’s ongoing denial of her father’s alcoholism with one of the most successful cover-ups in the history of the U.S. military machine, increases the half life of her story’s power to affect our lives exponentially. More than the sum of its well-made and riveting parts, Full Body Burden asks us to take a fresh look at our complicity in the lies we’ve been told, as well as the ones we are telling. As a Coloradoan, as a U.S. citizen, I can’t imagine a more effective lifting of the shroud of Rocky Flats."
--PAM HOUSTON, author of Contents May Have Shifted and Cowboys Are My Weakness
“A subject as grippingly immediate as today's headlines. . . Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave, an expose about ignorance and denial and the cost of government excess, and an intensely personal portrait of a family.”
--RICHARD BAUSCH, author of Peace and Something Is Out There: Stories
“The fight over Rocky Flats was and is a paradigmatic American battle, of corporate and government power set against the bravery and anger of normal people. This is a powerful and beautiful account, of great use to all of us who will fight the battles that lie ahead.”
--BILL MCKIBBEN, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth
“Full Body Burden has all the elements of a classic horror tale: the charming nuclear family cruising innocently above the undercurrents of nuclear nightmare. But it's true and all the more chilling. Kristen Iversen has lived this life and is an authority on the culture of secrecy that has prevented the nation from knowing the truth about radioactive contamination.”
--BOBBIE ANN MASON, author of The Girl in the Blue Beret and Shiloh and Other Stories
“Part memoir, part investigative journalism, FULL BODY BURDEN is a tale that will haunt your dreams. It’s a story of secrecy, deceit, and betrayal set in the majestic high plains of Colorado. Kristen Iversen takes us behind her family’s closed doors and beyond the security fences and the armed guards at Rocky Flats. She’s as honest and restrained in her portrait of a family in crisis as she is in documenting the incomprehensible betrayal of citizens by their government, in exposing the harrowing disregard for public safety exhibited by the technocrats in charge of a top-secret nuclear weapons facility. For decades the question asked by residents living downwind of the plant was "Would my government deliberately put my life and the lives of my children in danger?" The simple and irrefutable answer was "Yes, it would . . . in a Colorado minute."
--JOHN DUFRESNE, author of Louisiana Power & Light
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