Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Disaster by Adam Higginbotham, 538 pages.Higginbotham presents a wealth of terrifying detail about the 1986 disaster at reactor number 4 at the nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. The scale of the disaster, the probable human toll, and the size of the cover-up are now, after 34 years, coming to light.
It's an excellent book, and the author deftly places the narrative of the disaster in the strange vertex between the old Soviet style secrecy and the new openness of Perestroika.
Personal stories and a look back show how government secrets, spin, lies, and misdirection have kept the story of the slow response, and the frightening aftermath buried.
An excellent book and the winner of last year's Carnegie medal.
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