When John D Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government s plan to store high-level nuclear waste at a place called Yucca Mountain, a desert range near the city of Las Vegas. Bearing witness to the parade of scientific, cultural, and political facts that give shape to Yucca s story, D Agata keeps the six tenets of reporting in mind Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How arranging his own investigation around each vital question.Yet as the contradictions inherent in Yucca s story are revealed, D Agata s investigation turns inevitably personal. He finds himself investigating the death of a teenager who jumps off the tower of the Stratosphere Hotel, a boy whom D Agata believes he spoke with before his suicide.Here is the work of a penetrating thinker whose startling portrait of a mountain in the desert compels a reexamination of the future of human life.