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Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Audiobook
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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Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed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.
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“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. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“Superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying.”
— New York Times -
“Wonderful and chilling…With thriller-like flair…[tells] a tale of hubris and doomed ambition, featuring Communist party bosses and hapless engineers, victims and villains, confusion and cover-up.”
— Guardian (London) -
“Aa gripping detective story in which mistakes pile up as the narrative moves toward tragedy.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“This is a highly detailed, carefully documented, beautifully narrated telling of this breathtakingly complex accident and its mitigation. Higginbotham’s handling of the sociopolitical context is also deft.”
— Nature -
“The most complete and compelling history yet written in English of the worst nuclear power plant meltdown in history.”
— Christian Science Monitor -
“A definitive book. Adam Higginbotham has written a wonderful and chilling account…with thriller-like flair.”
— Luke Harding, author of Mafia State
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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A #1 Amazon.com bestseller in 20th Century World History
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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A New York Times audio bestseller
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Shortlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
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One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of the Year in Nonfiction
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A Time Magazine Best Book of the Year
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A New York Times Best Book of the Year
Midnight in Chernobyl Listener Reviews
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" MIDNIGHT IN CHERNOBYL is the best non-fiction audio book I've listened to in a long time. Author Adam Higginbotham has done an incredible job of researching the 1986 nuclear accident: its origin in questionable design, the building of the reactors, the cultural gigantism that assumed if one huge suboptimal reactor could work, why not four of them? All this took place within a the Soviet culture that mixed military, political and engineering concerns in an atmosphere of not asking questions. When the disaster hit, the Communist propaganda machine struck, consistently underestimating the extent of the tragedy and delaying necessary responses. "
— Ian, 8/5/2019
About Adam Higginbotham
Adam Higginbotham is the author of the highly acclaimed nonfiction book Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, and the New York Times bestseller Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. He writes for the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, Businessweek, Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, and The Atavist. He began his career in magazines and newspapers in London, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Face and a contributing editor at the London Sunday Telegraph.
About Jacques Roy
Jacques Roy is a audio narrator and actor, known for The Lower Angels and Room and Board.