On the night of April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, triggering one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. Drawing on more than a decade of research, hundreds of interviews, personal correspondence, unpublished memoirs, and recently declassified archival documents, journalist Adam Higginbotham has written a haunting and gripping account of the Chernobyl disaster through the eyes of its first witnesses. The result is a masterfully crafted documentary thriller, a definitive account of an event that changed history – one that is far more complex, human, and terrifying than the myth of Chernobyl we have become accustomed to.

Chernobyl: History of a Disaster is an indelible portrait of one of the 20th century’s great disasters, but it is also a document of human resilience and ingenuity, a testament to the hard lessons humanity has learned in its quest to bend nature to its will – lessons that, in the face of advancing climate change and other modern threats, seem not just important, but vital.