In her "glowing" foreword aptly titled "The Practice of Humanity," Alison Hawthorne Deming captures both the essence and the appeal of Learning to Glow: this is a book that argues elegantly and successfully for the power and the value of anecdotal evidence. Editor John Bradley artfully combines the poignant, often poetic memories of "everyday people" and "ordinary working folks" who have endured the nuclear age, and proudly proclaims the emotional, historical, and scholarly value of their stories (xv). The result is a first-rate anthology, one that prohibits its readers from reducing their recollections, and their assessments, of America's ongoing nuclear age to the chronological limits of the 1950s or the philosophical realm of the cold war.

The anthology consists of three distinct parts flanked by a foreword and introduction on one end, a list of recommended reading and an index on the other. Each of the three parts -- "In the Belly of the Beast," "Coyote Learns to Glow," and "Beyond Despair" -- is named after one of the essays included in the section it introduces. Part one traces the experience of growing up in a world steeped in the fear, and the reality, of atomic power. Part two explores the devastatingly real impact of nuclear fallout on the environment and all its inhabitants. Part three focuses mainly on the brutal destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on the healing that, remarkably, has taken place. Together, all three parts work to tell what Bradley terms a "people's history of the atom" and to celebrate the capacity for hope and regeneration exemplified by these diverse people, in both their deeds and their words (xx).

Though the book's weaknesses are few, I found both the section titles and the inclusion of Terry Tempest Williams' "The Clan of One-Breasted Women" mildly disapppointing. While titles like those noted above do serve to highlight the anecdotal nature of the book and to emphasize the importance of its individual components and contributors, they do little to help the reader to negotiate the overall text, to figure out what's coming next and why. And, while Williams' essay is a brilliant and important piece, hers is a story that has, in the sense of being widely published, already been told. The book's mission -- in part to make the invisible visible -- might better have been served by the inclusion of a lesser known yet equally compelling story, one that hasn't already been "seen" in so many contexts.

One of the book's greatest, though untouted, benefits is its potential as a pedagogical tool, especially in this interdisciplinary age. By pairing Valerie Kuletz's "Tragedy at the Center of the Universe" -- a powerful story of "nuclear colonization," documenting the horrific effects of uranium mining on the Four Corners area and the people of the Laguna Pueblo (143) -- with a selection of works by Leslie Marmon Silko, a literature or American Indian Studies professor might significantly broaden a discussion of the awesome physical and cultural impact of atomic power and the stories it generates. A like-minded film or cultural studies teacher might combine a reading of Bill Witherup's "Mother Witherup's Top-Secret Cherry Pie" -- a tender story of his father's losing battle with plutonium-induced cancer mixed with a wry commentary on family and espionage in the 1950s -- with analyses of Robert Aldrich's 1955 film noir, Kiss Me Deadly, and the 1982 documentary, Atomic Café.

Ultimately, and rightly so, Learning to Glow bills itself as a call to action, as an attempt to refute simultaneously the notions that the nuclear age has ended and/or that we can no longer do anything about it. In his introduction to the collection, Bradley explains that he hopes the combined essays "will make radiation a little less abstract and invisible," that "they will demonstrate the folly and the consequences of secrecy, of disinterest, of assuming someone else will take care of our nuclear problems for us," and that they "will encourage Americans to start asking more questions" (xvii). The classroom, especially given this book's myriad teaching applications as well as its expert mix of emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual impact, seems like a fine place to start.