Originally published in 1994, "The Firecracker Boys" by Fairbanks author Dan O'Neill has just been re-issued. O'Neill was interviewed recently by Susan Andrews and John Creed, who are journalism/humanities professors at the University of Alaska's Chukchi College in Kotzebue in Northwest Alaska.

Q. "The Firecracker Boys" is on everybody's list of the most important books ever published on our state. Did you know when you started it would have such an impact?

A. I did think it was a great story and a generally unknown one, even among long-time Alaskans. It looked to me like a story that had been, in a sense, deliberately buried, which further sparked my interest to dig it out and shine some light on it.

Q. Briefly, what is "The Firecracker Boys" all about?

A. It's about Project Chariot, a scheme by the federal government to create a deep-water harbor on Alaska's Northwest Arctic coast in the late 1950s and early 1960s by detonating up to six thermonuclear bombs.

In 1958, Edward Teller -- the father of the H-bomb -- came up to Alaska and proposed to excavate an instant harbor up near Point Hope by burying a string of H-bombs and touching them off. Almost the whole state signed on. With enthusiasm! Except the people of Point Hope and a few scientists and conservationists. To put it glibly, the firecracker boys came up here with nuclear bombs in their back pockets, and they were faced down by guys with harpoons.

To be serious, the story illustrates pretty well the dangers of secret and unaccountable science when it is abetted by a historically sycophantic press and self-serving business interests. But it also shows the power of a dedicated grassroots protest armed with facts.

Q. The book is a sort of historical expose, as you suggest. To what extent were you motivated to expose "evil doers," to use a current term? And why stir up and inflame old controversies long since put to rest?

A. First of all, I think everybody is a mixture of wonderful qualities and silly foibles. So it's more honest to render people who may have done foolish things as also possessing admirable traits, and to render people who showed better judgment as not wholly perfect. It's not only true, it makes for better drama. I tried to do that. So, nobody is all "evil doer."

But I also had a guideline that I followed. If the thing I uncovered was, let's say, highly unflattering to a person or an institution, but met three criteria, I put it in the book. The three criteria were: it had to be true, important, and unknown. ...

I happen to think that history and journalism are important work. And both enterprises are premised on discovering and publicizing the truth about what happened. I don't apologize for doing that.

Q. You have a new subtitle ("H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement") and a new cover. Have you added much to the original text?

A. Yes, there's new material; things have happened. The decision to deploy National Missile Defense interceptors in Alaska, for example, happened after the book came out in 1994. It, like Project Chariot, is a Teller-inspired, Alaska-based, nuclear-bomb-related, hugely expensive, high-tech boondoggle. It fit right in, so I wrote a section on it.

People died since the book first came out: Teller, William Wood. Other things, like the Amchitka workers' successful plea for government compensation.

And I wrote a bit in the methodology section about the increased secrecy under Bush. It's unprecedented in our history. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was lucky to have been writing during the Clinton administration. Clinton was instructing his people to declassify documents. I'm not sure I could have written this book during the current administration.

Also, I think that if you do anything steadily for 13 years you get better at it. I've become a better writer. So, I went through the whole thing and tweaked the prose. And I got the benefit of a good edit from my new publisher. And then a copy edit after that. Every stage improved it further.

Q. We understand there is some interest in Hollywood. A feature film? Leonardo DiCaprio?

A. Yeah, it's "in development," as they say. At HBO in association with Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appien Way. I understand they have a script that the moguls like and are showing to directors. Also, they've attached an actress who is both a Native and has deep Alaska roots -- Q'Orianka Kilcher. She played Pocahontas in the movie "The New World." Part of the Kilcher clan from down Kachemak Bay. Cousin to Jewel.

Q. Do you think the chances are good the movie will get made?

A. I don't know, but I have this daydream: One day my neighbors see a white stretch-limo coming up my gravel road, and there's three or four certified Hollywood bimbos hanging out the skylight -- hanging out of everything -- raucous, spilling champagne. And there's this scruffy, gray-bearded guy in there in a ratty flannel shirt. That'll be me.

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