The Firecracker Boys

New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1994. Second printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Good. [12], 388 pages. Maps. Illustrations. Methodology. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Name in ink on half-title page. Front cover has some curling. Dan O'Neill is an Alaskan writer. Dan O'Neill came to Alaska in the 1970s and did a variety of things, such as conducting oral history interviews, and as a producer of radio, television, and video productions dealing with history, science, and politics. He is the author of three Alaskan themed books. From 1985 to 1995 he worked for the Oral History Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, including doing project interviews about the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. These interviews formed the basis of his book A Land Gone Lonesome, which was awarded an "Editor's Choice" at The New York Times Book Review. O'Neill twice won the Alaska Library Association's "Alaskana of the Year Award" for the best book on Alaska published anywhere. He also was named Alaska Historian of the Year by the Alaska Historical Society. Derived from a Kirkus review: O'Neill, a University of Alaska oral historian, builds on his previous studies of Project Chariot, a plan by the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s to use a thermonuclear blast to create a major harbor on the Alaskan coast. Atomic hubris is personified by O'Neill's Faust, Edward Teller, who wanted to nuke the world's ice pack and flood the deserts in what he called ``geographic engineering.'' Teller and others from the military and scientific communities were opposed by a vocal minority of Alaskans, by the first environmental activists, and by Arctic-loving scientists. The proposed ground zero was a pristine spot called Tikiraq. O'Neill periodically breaks from the political wrangling to limn in glorious detail the richness of Arctic wildlife and Eskimo culture. For the first time, the Feds (obsessed with Reds) had to consider a people's irreplaceable loss of their ``way of life.'' Eyebrow- and consciousness-raising at its ecological best.