Midnight in Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham
Midnight in Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham
35 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
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Midnight in Chernobyl
The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Bestseller

Author: Adam Higginbotham

Narrator: Jacques Roy

Unabridged: 13 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/12/2019


Synopsis

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Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed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.

About Adam Higginbotham

Adam Higginbotham has written for The New YorkerThe New York Times MagazineWiredGQ, and Smithsonian. He is the author of Midnight in Chernobyl, which was the winner of the William E. Colby Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. He lives with his family in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Venesa on November 24, 2024

This is a powerful and disturbing book of the events leading up to the Chernobyl disaster. The book not only covers the immediate buildup but also provides crucial context, including the political system that shaped the disaster and the intense pressures faced by individuals within it. The author of......more

Goodreads review by Yun on March 25, 2020

[Evgeny Velikhov] asked Deputy Minister Silayev to call Gorbachev with a message: "Tell him that our outhouse is overflowing, and they'll have to climb a mountain of shit."Midnight in Chernobyl is a comprehensive account of the events leading up to and resulting from the meltdown of Reactor Numb......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on May 03, 2020

Growing up during the 80s and the final stages of the cold war I remember many, big defining stories in the 80s and early 90s. Reagan vs Gorbachev. The arms race. The fall of the Berlin Wall. But, probably the biggest event with the longest lasting impact is the Chernobyl disaster. While the Berlin W......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on December 25, 2019

10+stars: Oh My Dear Lord, this novel will scare the beejesus out of you. Journalist Adam Higgnbothem has written an amazing documentary of the 1986 catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the USSR. I listened to the audible production that is narrated by Jacques Roy. At the beginning, Roy lis......more


Quotes

"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."