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Adam Higginbotham – Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster

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May 6, 2019Our time machine travels back to the nuclear nightmare at the Soviet Union’s V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station — as destined to fail, as the political system of its namesake. On April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 exploded, and in the 30 years since, a name that few in the world could have placed, has become synonymous with radioactive Armageddon. What really happened?

Communist propaganda long obscured the story of the accident behind the Iron Curtain. Here with his Geiger counter to tally the cost and causes is Adam Higginbotham, who brings us, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and recently declassified archives, Higginbotham has written the true history at last in a book that reads like a thriller.

You’ve seen our guest’s work in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, and Smithsonian. Find him online at AdamHigginbotham.com or @HigginbothamA on Twitter.