Midnight in Chernobyl

The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

De: Adam Higginbotham

Narrado por: Jacques Roy

One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019!

A New York Times Best Book of the Year
A Time Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner

From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that reads almost like the script for a movie” (The Wall Street Journal)—a powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the history’s worst nuclear disasters.

Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the 20th century’s greatest disasters. 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 its citizens and the entire world. 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Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a “riveting, deeply reported reconstruction” (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.

“The most complete and compelling history yet” (The Christian Science Monitor), Higginbotham’s “superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying...extraordinary” (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of 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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Jacques Roy's nuanced performance of Higginbotham's harrowing audiobook keeps listeners deeply engaged. . . . Roy's masterful narration enhances this stark and terrifying account of one of the worst disasters in human history."

Gripping non-fiction technological thriller

This minute-by-minute account of the Chernobyl disaster, when a huge nuclear reactor went out of control in a couple of seconds, after several errors of mismanagement by a complacent night shift staff, makes a fascinating account of the clash between the need for science to publicize its failures as well as successes, and the need of the Soviet government to maintain the fiction that Central Management of the nation has created and maintained a mistake-proof society. I especially liked the way that this narrator maintains an even, steady and clear verbal recitation of this disaster in the face of one terrible incident after another. The author goes back to the beginning of the nuclear age in the USSR, showng how the demands of the regime for ever-bigger projects and the concomitant demands to show the West that the USSR can build everything bigger, faster and with more advanced technology, led to a series of bad decisions in developing civilian nuclear power resulting in dangerous reactors and inadequate disaster planning. The KGB and other organs of secrecy and disinformation concealed every nuclear incident so that relevant scientific and engineering people never learned from the mistakes that were being made, because mistakes were by definition impossible, therefore suppressed. So when the Chernobyl reactor disintegrated in an instant, at first nobody in the scientific community could believe what had happened. After the reactor exploded, it took days for the Politiburo in Moscow to get even partial accurate information about what had happened, since the entire bureaucratic system had been conditioned to suppress bad facts at every turn, even when reporting to superiors. Meanwhile, radiation poisoning was spreading to a broader population as the days turned into weeks. The people living in the most dangerous areas never did learn the truth of what happened. Although the book is written in matter-of-fact reporting, the tension brought forward by recitation of the facts makes this book into a real page-turner. I listened to this book in the car, and often sat in the garage after arriving home because I just couldn't stop listening.

Amazing in depth accounting of the disaster

I'm a bit fascinated by the Chernobyl disaster and as such have read a lot about the events leading up to it and the aftermath. I saw this book in a local bookstore and knew I had to get it. I decided to grab the audio book so I could listen at work and at the gym. If you saw the HBO show and are wanting to k ow the real story, this is the book for you. It's very dry, this is not a dramatization. This is like reading a text book, and that's a good thing. By the e d of this you will understand the players, their motivations and the science behind the RBMK reactor. You will understand a little about what life was like in soviet Russia. You will be horrified, and sad, and vastly informed. Your enjoyment will depend on your desire to learn the facts, as like I mentioned, this is not a story.ut an accounting. I highly recommend it.

Compelling

This is a fabulous book and a terrific listen, as the narrator, Jacque Roy is spectacular. This is a detailed, yet engaging, history of the world’s greatest (peacetime) nuclear disaster. All the Russian names are hard to keep track of, but the narrative is understandable, well-paced, and informative. The reporting and writing by Adam Higginbotham are superb.

wow just wow

This was an excellent telling of what happened that day. It it's incredibly sad in some places thinking of all the suffering that could have been avoided.

Sometimes Hard To Keep Track of All The Players

Very informative, a very interesting view into the Soviet life style - courage and sadly loss. Well written.