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 ΓÇ£account that reads almost like the script for a movieΓÇ¥ (The Wall Street Journal)ΓÇöa powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propagandasecrecyand myth have obscured the true story of one of the historyΓÇÖs worst nuclear disasters. Early in the morning of April 261986Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station explodedtriggering one of the twentieth centuryΓÇÖs greatest disasters. In the thirty years since thenChernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoningfor a dangerous technology slipping its leashfor ecological fragilityand for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accidentclouded from the beginning by secrecypropagandaand misinformationhas long remained in dispute. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten yearsas well as lettersunpublished memoirsand documents from recently-declassified archivesAdam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a ΓÇ£rivetingdeeply reported reconstructionΓÇ¥ (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complexmore humanand more terrifying than the Soviet myth. ΓÇ£The most complete and compelling history yetΓÇ¥ (The Christian Science Monitor)HigginbothamΓÇÖs ΓÇ£superbenthrallingand necessarily terrifying…extraordinaryΓÇ¥ (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his willΓÇölessons whichin the face of climate change and other threatsremain not just vital but necessary.