A Nuclear Family Vacation

Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry

By: Nathan Hodge, Sharon Weinberger

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

In A Nuclear Family Vacation, husband-and-wife journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger hit the road to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Weaving together first-class travel writing and crack investigative journalism, the pair pursues both adventures and answers: Why are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there really such a thing as a suitcase nuke? And which nuclear power plants are most likely to be covers for weapons programs? Their itinerary takes them from the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan to the U.S.'s own top-secret "Site R", opening a unique perspective on the world's vast nuclear infrastructure and the international politics at play behind it.

©2008 Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Nuclear weapons discussed by June Cleaver

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Possibly, depending on the friend.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Laural Merlington?

Anyone. A man would be fine.

Did A Nuclear Family Vacation inspire you to do anything?

Read more about our nuclear history.

Any additional comments?

It's a neat, behind the scene perspective on a hidden topic. The interviews and site descriptions make the book. As a politically charged topic, the author stays fairly neutral. This is enough to make the book readable, but there is something about the overall story that I found incredibly annoying. Perhaps some of this was that the selected narrator who sounded like June Cleaver discussing technical aspects of nuclear holocaust, perhaps it was the superficial knowledge of the author of the topic, which had little depth beyond the interviews, or perhaps it was just frustrating that a lot of the stories just never went deep enough (due in part to national security)....whatever it was, I made it though the book, but I was constantly on the verge of turning it off.