About a Mountain has been a source of controversy almost since its publication. Its author, John D'Agata, has admitted to changing many elements, major and minor, of his experience in order to make the book more artistically pleasing. Regardless of the ethical ramifications of this, it's not even clear that he succeeded.
Ostensibly, the author's intention in writing this book is to alert the public to two major crises in the city of Las Vegas: the nuclear threat of Yucca Mountain and the psychological threat of growing depression in the city. Accordingly, he alternates between these problems, considering the nature of the city, then the mountain, and then switching a couple more times before closing the book with a powerful illustration. At the beginning of the book, D'Agata helps move his mother out to Las Vegas, where she plans to retire. While he's staying there for a couple of weeks, he becomes interested in the matter of the Yucca Mountain project, which has a serious impact on the lives of those in the city. Investigating these leads with the determination of a journalist on a deadline, he comes to discover many uncomfortably disconcerting secrets and cover-ups about the project, which could endanger the inhabitants of the nearby city with the leakage of radiation (a future almost guaranteed by the subpar test results received from the mountain). D'Agata wants to publish the knowledge he gained about the situation in order to hopefully sway the opinion of America in a different direction.
In addition to the problem of the mountain, however, this book also concerns the issue of depression in the city of Las Vegas. D'Agata notes a terrible irony: Las Vegas is seen as one of the most exciting and fulfilling places in the country, but its inhabitants are noticeably less happy than those of less "exciting" cities. The suicide rate in the city is the highest in the country, and the rates of high school dropouts, smokers, drug users, DUIs, bankruptcy, and divorce are also at the top of the list in the U.S. Why do people living in the "world's greatest city" feel so miserable? This question is at the heart of this narrative, and its effects permeate the entire book, which closes with the scene of sixteen-year-old Levi Presley committing suicide by jumping off a building.
The controversy over this book, however, lies mostly in the author's liberal use of facts in the narrative essay. In correspondence with various fact-checkers and media personalities, D'Agata has displayed a defensive, almost belligerent attitude toward the investigation into the veracity of the "facts" he includes in the book. It comes to light that he changes statistics, such as the number of strip clubs in the area, simply because they sound better in the sentence. This, by the way, from an author who is notable for writing sentences that are far from beautiful. He admits to having changed dates and crucial facts about people, such as their backgrounds and cities of origin, in order to convey the sense that he wants to give about them. This type of "interpretation" of fact is not standard practice in a nonfiction essay, so D'Agata has (deservedly) received quite a bit of criticism.
Regardless of the ethical foundation of this book, however, D'Agata succeeds in getting his point across: the reader will undoubtedly leave this book for a better sense of the problems plaguing Las Vegas than he would have imagined.
