Midnight in Chernobyl- The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
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Web ID: 16836268Critical
There's no denying that 1986 was a year of tragedy, with two major disasters: the explosions of Space Shuttle Challenger in January and of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in April. Both were horrific in their own right and arguably could have been avoided. And while Challenger claimed seven lives in an instant, Chernobyl killed 30 over the course of three months with countless lives affected in the months and years thereafter. This book was written by a journalist, so it is incredibly well-researched. So much so that in addition to a bibliography, there are over 100 pages of notes on who was interviewed, as well as when and where. This was clearly a passion project for Adam Higginbotham; in his acknowledgements he credits a couple different periodicals that he worked for that granted him funds and time to travel abroad to collect the stories for this book. Anyone who has read my other reviews of non-fiction know that I prefer a certain chronological approach to telling these kinds of stories. However, in this case the author does a pretty good job of breaking the overarching story almost into little vignettes which focus on a specific person, team, or project. For example, one chapter details the Sarcophagus, which was started less than a month after the disaster and took 206 days to construct (although the chapter is placed in the latter half of the book). Other than the loss of life and displacement of numerous people (not to mention those poor pets), the politics involved in this disaster may be the most sobering part of this story. Due to the nature of the government at the time (hopefully not so much the case now... hopefully), there was a lot of secrecy around any issues in Soviet nuclear reactors. The USSR wanted to be seen as the leading government with the safest and most reliable nuclear capabilities in the world. They didn't want to be compared to the US after the Three Mile Island accident; incidently the US didn't do the greatest job being forthcoming with information after Three Mile Island... This book is beefy at over 500 pages, but the actual meat of the story is much less than that (remember all the back matter I mentioned earlier). At any rate, it is very much worth a read! I will say that I listened to the audiobook as I read along since I'm a dumb American and get caught up with the names and terms. I saw the 2019 HBO miniseries back in 2022 and mistakenly thought it was based on this book. While that miniseries takes some creative liberties for the dramatization, it is still a fantastic watch. But I do feel like this book is the best account of the disaster that I've encountered so far. The one thing - just one thing - I would have liked would be a detailed timeline of events of the disaster and the events that followed. Other than that, I can't think of anything else that would have made this book better. This book was 5 out of 5 stars (4.5 out of 5 if I'm being super critical... was that a reactor pun?!) and should be read by anyone who considers themselves a history buff. It is sad and infuriating throughout, but as we all know, those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Couldn't have asked for anything better
An absolutely magnificent account of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that clearly explains all of the technical how to of a nuclear reactor, affects of radiation, ministries within the USSR, and the severity of the situation while at the same time, being told as a compelling narrative that makes you eat up every word on the page wanting to know what happened next and how could it possibly be saved. Thoroughly researched and understood to the point where Higginbotham can clearly explain complex issues, this is a great book for learning about the explosive events and the fallout still raining down to this day.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Overwhelming amount of detail & great storytelling
I am a sophomore in High School and read this book for a research project. I had brief knowledge of this disaster beforehand but after reading this book I would consider myself an expert on this topic. This book provides a great and sometimes overwhelming amount of detail. it was an extremely interesting book and the author does a great job of keeping the reader interested in this topic. Although, it is not a quick read and I encourage anyone that picks up this book to really absorb the information and let it sit in your brain I would recommend this book to everyone because you can go from not knowing anything about the Chernobyl Disaster to becoming extremely well educated on this topic.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Amazing account of what happened at Chernobyl
It was very very interesting....For anyone curious about Chernobyl and what happened, this book explains everything. What really peaked my interest was I saw the HBO show, and really liked it. Then I came across this book. The show was good but the book was even better. The book goes into a lot of details about the clean up and the actual events leading up to the incident. Plus the show kind of ends and you don’t see a whole lot of what goes on after. The book explains everything right up into the present day of the struggles everyone faced in cleaning up the biggest nuclear disaster in history. For anyone thinking about reading it, on the fence, go ahead. You will enjoy this. Very moving and just all in all a great story.....
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Expertly Researched and Reads Like a Thriller
An extremely detailed and well-researched account of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Higginbotham excels in telling a story from the history in a way that this book reads like a thriller. He makes nuclear physics accessible to the layperson without oversimplifying and lays out the contributing factors and underlying fatal flaws that allowed this disaster to occur. This gives the reader a thorough understanding of both the inherent instability of the graphite-moderated RBMK reactors and the culture of secrecy and information suppression in the former Soviet Union. He also gives detailed back stories of the "cast of characters” (engineers, physicists, firefighters and their families) which keeps the human cost of this tragedy in just as much focus as the scientific and geopolitical impacts. This was an excellent companion to the HBO series if you're interested in diving deeper. You will recognize many of the names - Legaslov, Shcherbina, Dyatlov, Akimov, and Ignatenko, to name a few. There is a helpful “cast of characters” guide at the beginning of the book which I referred to many times. Despite its size (the hardcover is over 500 pages with about 140 pages of notes/citations) this was hard to put down because of Higginbotham's enthralling storytelling ability.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com