Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed

WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS WORK-IN-PROGRESS AWARD


Atop a craggy mesa in the northern reaches of the Navajo reservation lies what was once a world-class uranium mine called Monument No. 2. Discovered in the 1940s—during the government’s desperate press to build nuclear weapons—the mesa’s tremendous lode would forever change the lives of the hundreds of Native Americans who labored there and of their families, including many who dwelled in the valley below for generations afterward.

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