Midnight in Chernobyl

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.