BOOKS

Midnight In Chernobyl: Adam Higginbotham’s Explosive Story About What Really Happened

The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Ed Newman
5 min readJan 5, 2020

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Photo by Javier García on Unsplash

There’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of a good read. The last time I couldn’t put a book down was in the late 60s when I stayed up all night reading Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Friday night I was sorely tempted to stay up all night once more because of a book I almost couldn’t put down, Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight In Chernobyl.

Public domain.

It’s a remarkable account of the Chernobyl disaster. It’s quite apparent that a lot of work went into researching this story. The author, drawing from new sources, gives what is surely the most complete account of what really happened. What’s compelling is the writing itself. These are real people who were in the middle of a real situation.

The incident took place in the spring of 1986, April 26 to be precise, just days before the May 1 celebrations designed to show off the Soviet Union’s mighty power.

The book opens by setting the story within a context, that context being the Soviet Union after…

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Ed Newman

An avid reader who writes about arts, culture, literature & other life obsessions. @ennyman3 Look for my books on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/y3l9sfpj