• Midnight in Chernobyl

  • The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
  • By: Adam Higginbotham
  • Narrated by: Jacques Roy
  • Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (55 ratings)

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Midnight in Chernobyl  By  cover art

Midnight in Chernobyl

By: Adam Higginbotham
Narrated by: Jacques Roy
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Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.

Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history’s worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a masterful non-fiction thriller, 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.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will--lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats—remain not just vital but necessary.

©2019 Adam Higginbotham (P)2019 Penguin Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

An invaluable contribution to history... tells a compelling story exceptionally well. (Serhii Plokhy)

What listeners say about Midnight in Chernobyl

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Well researched and well written

A terrific narration ..and the topic was covered without recourse to ideology or persuasion. makes me want to visit the site

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Non-stop anti-USSR propaganda

10 per cent fact, 90 per cent fiction how this became a NY Times best book mystifies me. I could not get to the reactor blowing before abandoning this ridiculous account of a major nuclear accident. Much detail (fiction) on the corruption and governing style of the Soviets; sparse verified fact.

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