Midnight in chernobyl : the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster

Summary: Eary in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history's worst nuclear accident. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham has written a gripping and compelling story that brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a chronicle of astonishing heroics and maddening incompetence, a study of the promise of science and also its potential to lure us into hubris and danger, and the definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.

Record details

ISBN: 9781501134630
Physical Description: xx, 538 pages, 16 unnumbered page of plates : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm.
Edition: First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition.
Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2019, 2020.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliography and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Part 1. Birth of a city. The Soviet Prometheus -- Alpha, beta, gamma -- Friday, April 25, 5:00 p.m., Pripyat -- Secrets of the peaceful atom -- Friday, April 25, 11:55 p.m., Unit Control Room Number Four -- Saturday, April 26, 1:28 a.m., Paramilitary Fire Station Number Two -- Saturday, 1:30 a.m., Kiev ; Saturday, 6:15 a.m., Pripyat -- Sunday, April 27, Pripyat -- Part 2. Death of an empire. The cloud -- The China Syndrome -- The battle of Chernobyl -- Inside Hospital Number Six -- The liquidators -- The investigation -- The sarcophagus -- The forbidden zone -- The trial -- The elephant's foot -- A tomb for Valery Khodemchuk.