"Corporal Russell Jack Dann felt an uneasiness rumble up from the pit of his stomach as he waited for the C-124 Globemaster to lift skyward. It wasn't the usual anxiety paratroopers feel before a jump that had his guts tied in knots but the uncertainty of what to expect when he would face the atomic bomb he knew was waiting for him on a desolate strip of Nevada desert."

Here begins the story of a soldier who in August 1957 volunteered to watch—from just 4,500 yards—the detonation of an atomic device four times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Dann was unaware of the lethal consequences of this act. Since that fateful day, he has endured twenty-three years of constant physical suffering: his hair and teeth have fallen out; he has lost the hearing in his left ear; sterile and quadraplegic, the former corporal is also a victim of leukopenia, a suspected precursor to leukemia.

Between 1948 and 1963, nearly 300,000 American soldiers like Russell Dann were exposed to low-level radiation during hundreds of nuclear bomb tests sponsored by both the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission. Today, the incidence of leukemia among these soldiers is more than double the national average. But because the Veteran's Administration refuses to acknowledge the connection between the nuclear tests and their disabilities, Dann and hundreds like him are unable to obtain any compensation.

While working as an investigative reporter for Jack Anderson, Rosenberg uncovered these awesome facts. Atomic Soldiers gives the full story—from the Pentagon masterminds who devised the tests, and the scientists, politicians, and government officials who deliberately concealed the dangers, to the soldiers who were unknowingly dealt a death sentence inside their own country by fellow Americans. Rosenberg's narrative "strips away the cloak of secrecy that surrounded the atomic testing program and allows those events to be viewed in a clear light, without the shadings of bogus claims of national security or the blotted ink of a censor's stamp." A report of paramount importance, Atomic Soldiers raises urgent questions about both atomic weapons and nuclear power that are crucial to the future of our culture.