I glow you glow we all glow for uranium (book review)

Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World (2009)  by Tom Zoellner

A history book for the hardcore and a history book that ranges a bit far from uranium (The actual history of uranium takes a few pages.  I could have stopped there but I had nothing else to read).  The book begins at when and where uranium became noticed with mankind and quickly works its way to the early 1900s when atomic theory and radiation were discovered by man.  After that the book becomes a history of the cold war and a history of mining uranium.  It is the story of the Soviet Union and their labor camps, the story of get rich schemes in America's southwest, and the story of politics (Australia is thought to hold 40% of the world's uranium but they produce and export very little because of internal opposition to the rock which is based on the morality of exporting a potential weapon).

I felt the book strayed off course but Zoellner had no choice.  He had a book to write and a literal history of the rock as it pertains to geology would be tedious and unreadable by anyone but academics within a tiny field, so kudos to Zoellner for filling 300 pages with mostly interesting things.  He talks about espionage, current events like India and Pakistan both having the bomb, why Israel wanted the bomb and how they got it (thanks France), the faked evidence America bought (metaphorically) to invade Iraq, Iran is there too, the giant uranium mines in Africa, and modern day uranium smuggling (Georgia is mentioned and they were in the news last year because they were invaded by Russia).  At times the book is surprisingly topical.

I would have liked to have seen a few things mentioned that he left out of the book.  How the atom bomb led to the H-bomb and the role uranium plays in that bomb?  Statistics on the H-bomb and some other information would have been nice since he spends a lot of time on the atomic bomb.  He doesn't mention atomic waste.  I'd be interested in knowing what exactly is toxic waste and how long is it toxic.  Other than that, the book is a quick, easy read with no technical jargon and no slow parts.