Midnight in Chernobyl

I picked this up after watching the HBO series Chernobyl and being so fascinated I wanted to know more. This book does an excellent job of giving the details and the real facts, filling in and correcting the condensed and dramatized version from the TV show.

For a fairly long book filled with facts, this does an amazing job of telling a relatable, human story. The context about Soviet nuclear history and ambitions, the political influences, and the historical forces were illuminating. The personal stories underlined the danger and the costs, but also demonstrated the resiliency of so many of those affected. Most compelling was the illustration of the blame/cover-up culture that was the true genesis for every thread of cause, from the design of the reactor, to the actions of the controllers, to the horrifying lag in understanding what had happened.

At times this did devolve a bit into a numbing litany of names and numbers. Sometimes people are introduced who disappear after one paragraph, while others are introduced in similar ways and wind up being key players. The information about the levels of radiation were usually gripping; the catalog of building materials and dimensions as the containment was built were less so.

But that's a small gripe - this is riveting and dramatic. It tells the systemic, scientific, and human stories well. It even acknowledges the threat of radiophobia (the number of people killed and injured by conventional coal plants is far greater than victims of nuclear incidents) and some hope for a future that better balances risk through scientific advances and refocusing away from nuclear weapons.

Holy cow that was fascinating. After watching the HBO show, I've been watching and reading about the Chernobyl incident, and Higginbotham's book is an amazing telling. He goes into the background of nuclear energy in the USSR, what happened at Chernobyl, the aftermath, plus interviews with survivors (including Bryukhanov), etc. Really well done and highly recommended.

“Satan sleeps beside the Pripyat.”

I knew of the Chernobyl disaster, but this book showed I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did. Well researched, well told, it read like a thriller with the play-by-play of a biography or memoir. I really appreciated the history and backstory behind the disaster, because I think a lot of what went on could be blamed on the Soviet-era hubris at the time and the willingness to overlook pesky things like safety measures and proper construction to save perceived face on a global scale.

I also really liked the structure of the book as a whole, where each chapter was dedicated to one part of what ends up being a very complex whole. It does seem to jump around a bit, particularly in the beginning, but with each chapter focused on a particular topic related to the disaster I feel like it was necessary to get the whole story. Chapter highlights for me included the 6 chapters dedicated to the day of and days following the event, discussion on The China Syndrome, Inside Hospital Number Six, and The Elephant's Foot. There's some really great stuff in this book.

Highly recommend to anyone interested in reading about this catastrophic event, or if you're looking for a good, gripping nonfiction book.

This is a harrowing, thorough book. I would have given it 5 stars, except at parts I felt that the HBO series that used this book as inspiration did a better job of getting across just how much of a disaster this was on an emotional level. I can't fault for the book for this, obviously, but since I watched the show first, it impacted my read.

The main take-aways I got from this book is how ineptitude spreads from the top down, and how people scrambling to cover their own asses can result in horrible things for the rest of us. One thing this book did very well was document how the survivors carried on, as well as how impossible the clean-up process was and how all of this effected the psychology of the U.S.S.R. and the citizens themselves.

Man, nuclear power just seems . . . like a bad idea? (I am intrigued by the thorium reactors Higginbotham mentions at the end but I'm not a scientist!!) I admit that I thought I would understand nuclear power more after reading this and I definitely don't. I do know that a “positive void coefficient” is very, very bad. How you get there or what it actually MEANS is still beyond me.

What was super interesting was the Soviet propaganda machine and the way the USSR handled - or mishandled - the disaster. One of the points the author posits is that Chernobyl contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union which I never really thought about.

If you love history then you'll love this. If you're interested in history but wish it was written as a thriller then you will LOVE this book. I literally know the outcome of Chernobyl and I was still getting anxiety about how everything was going to play out. Learned lots of things I didn't know about and it shows just how corrupt Russia is

It took me a bit to get into it, but once the groundwork was laid for the nuclear reactors and Soviet mindset, this book was FASCINATING. And HORRIFYING. And I want to ask how did I not know anything about this, but really I'm frustrated and horrified that even the people living in the area around Chernobyl, who were experiencing increased levels of radiation, didn't even know anything about the disaster because of all the bureaucratic secret-keeping and misinformation and propaganda.

Quite a feat of reporting. I'm not the greatest with Russian names (so many people named Alexander and Leonid and Valery!) but Higginbotham did a good job of including titles and attempting to differentiate the individuals from each other as they popped up throughout the book.

History books, at the best of times, can be entertaining filled with information on a wide variety of topics. At worst, history books can be boring and drag considerably. Thankfully, Midnight in Chornobyl is a book that manages to be both entertaining and insightful on the disaster of the destroyed reactor that sowed fear and doubt about nuclear power and, according to some, hastened the downfall of the Soviet Union.

One of the best parts of this book is how the different elements of Chornobyl are juggled by the author. The author works well balancing the scientific theories of nuclear power, both explaining the idea of how to generate energy, as well as how the plant at Chornobyl failed on a scientific level. The author also manages to talk about the development of Chornobyl, including the different ways that the plant was built, with parts not delivered on time, or in some cases not at all, forcing them to deal with substandard materials. Then, the author takes an aim at the culture of the Soviet Union. Unfamiliar to most people in the west, this was something that led to the disaster on a fundamental level. All of this is handled extremely well, giving the reader a sense that it was simply a perfect storm of events that, had any one of them been avoided, the disaster could have never happened.

Then there is the follow-up to the accident itself. This included a potential government cover-up, then, when it became too big to hide, the trial where people's fate was already pre-decided, placing blame on the workers in the control room, not on the design of the power plant itself. The re-telling of the scandal is handled very well and allows the reader to understand the level of corruption that permeated the Soviet Union, despite Gorbichov's efforts at reform.

All of this makes for a history book that is a high standout for me, but what makes this a potential book of the year would be the narration. The narrator in this text, Jacques Roy, is well cast as he performs the piece well. His voice shows the coming darkness of the Chornobyl disaster. His performance makes sure to highlight the ironic and disastrous moments in the text, emphasizing the conclusion of a scene, so the reader gets the full effect of the passage. This makes for an audiobook that, in my opinion, may just be superior to the book.

All of this makes me say that this will very likely be a book of the year contender for me. I think this was excellently done and is an enlightening look at the Chornobyl disaster. If you want to read about the disaster itself, then I suggest you pick up this book. You will not be disappointed. I give it a five out of five.

Great book! I've started reading it after watching HBO's Chernobyl because the show left me with a lot of questions and I can say that I found answer to them in the book. Recommended to whoever is interested in the Chernobyl disaster, it's well written and easy to comprehend, but I would suggest you write down the characters' names because it can get pretty confused who is who later on. Overall a great experience.