Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (Paperback)

'This history reads like an academic thriller written by Malcolm Gladwell. Plokhy has a knack for making complicated things simple while still profound.' - The Observer

'A lucid account of how the Soviet mania for nuclear power combined with endemic shoddiness in the the industrial sector and near-paranoid habits of state secrecy led to the 1986 distaster.' - FT

'…plunges the reader into the sweaty, nervous tension of the Chernobyl control room on the fateful night when human frailty and design flaws combined to such devastating effect.' - The Guardian

'...the first full-scale history of the world's worst nuclear disaster…Plokhy is a master of the telling detail' - The Sunday Times

'An important work that offers a clear-eyed assessment of the disaster and its consequences. . . Plokhy tells the story with great assurance and style, and the majority of his material appears here for the first time in English' - Tobie Mathew, Literary Review 

'An ambitious work. . . Plokhy's range, from scene-setting and character-sketching to hard science and political analysis, is near-Tolstoyan. His voice is humane and inflected with nostalgia' - Roland Elliott Brown, Spectator

'A compelling history of the 1986 disaster and its aftermath . . . plunges the reader into the sweaty, nervous tension of the Chernobyl control room on that fateful night when human frailty and design flaws combined to such devastating effect' Daniel Beer, Guardian

'Haunting ... near-Tolstoyan. His voice is humane and inflected with nostalgia' Roland Elliott Brown, Spectator