Full Body Burden

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

Bobbie Ann Mason

A tale that will haunt your dreams

John Dufresne

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

Richard Bausch

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'

Full Body Burden is one of the most important stories of the nuclear era. 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'

What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristin 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'

In this powerful work of research and personal testimony, Iversen chronicles the story of America’s willfully blinkered relationship to the nuclear weapons industry through the haunting experience of her own family in Colorado

Publishers Weekly

Gripping... exquisitely researched... A superbly crafted tale of Cold War America’s dark underside

Kirkus Reviews

News stories come and go. It takes a book of this exceptional caliber to focus our attention and marshal our collective commitment to preventing future nuclear horrors

Booklist

With meticulous reporting and a clear eye for details, Iversen has crafted a chilling, brilliantly written cautionary tale about the dangers of blind trust. Through interviews, sifting through thousands of records (some remain sealed) and even a stint as a Rocky Flats receptionist, she uncovers decades of governmental deception. Full Body Burden is both an engrossing memoir and a powerful piece of investigative journalism

Bookpage

A shocking and salutary coming-of-age memoir, Kristen Iversen has produced a meticulously researched and compelling narrative of growing up in the "sacrifice zone" of America’s nuclear weapons programme… Full Body Burden is one of those rare, life-changing works whose quiet, insistent moral authority commands us to read on and to remember

Melanie McGrath, Sunday Telegraph

Superb... her prose combines perceptive lyricism with stark brutality

New Scientist

Part personal memoir, part polemic; wholly memorable (4 stars)

Scotsman

As [Iversen] and her primary school classmates were being taught to duck and cover pathetically when the Soviets finally struck, they were all along coming under silent attack from their own government. Against a bracingly realised backdrop of the rural American mountain west, Iversen recounts a superficially untroubled childhood of horse-riding, jumping in lakes and kissing boys. Yet it is turned chilling by our steadily mounting knowledge, and her happy ignorance at the time, of what was going on just a few miles upwind without the consent of those being polluted

Jon Swain, Literary Review

An enjoyable and powerful read

Rosie Kinchen, Sunday Times

An intriguing mix of memoir and first-class investigative journalism, a sort of Mad Men meets Erin Brockovich

Independent