Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy

A dramatic, minute-by-minute account of one of the most shattering events of the Cold War, from the award-winning, Ukrainian historian.

On the morning of 26 April 1986 Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history – the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. The outburst put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation. In the end, less than five percent of the reactor’s fuel escaped, but that was enough to contaminate over half of Europe with radioactive fallout.

In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy recreates the events surrounding the worst nuclear disaster in history, telling the stories of the firefighters, scientists, engineers, workers, soldiers, and policemen who found themselves caught in a nuclear Armageddon and succeeded in doing the seemingly impossible – extinguishing the nuclear inferno and putting the reactor to sleep. A poignant, fast paced account of the drama of heroes, perpetrators, and victims, Chernobyl is the definitive history of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

A dramatic, minute-by-minute account of one of the most shattering events of the Cold War, from an award-winning historian.