"Journalist Adam Higginbotham's definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster--and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters. Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history's worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then,...

An in depth look at the stories of firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who worked to extinguish the nuclear inferno of Chernobyl identifies the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry. April 26, 1986. Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. Plokhy tells...