Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

基本信息

Hardcover: 560 pages

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (February 12, 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1501134612

ISBN-13: 978-1501134616

Product Dimensions: 140 x 211 x 33mm | 454g

页面参数仅供参考，具体以实物为准

书籍简介

《纽约时报》年度十佳好书

《纽约时报》年度十大好书（非虚构类）

科克斯书评十佳非虚构类好书

安德鲁·卡内基文学奖

NPR2019年度图书之一

记者亚当·希金博特姆的关于切尔诺贝利核事故的这部纪实作品《切尔诺贝利的午夜：世界大规模核灾难背后的故事》耗时多年，已于近期出版——本书有力地记录了宣传、保密以及传说是如何掩盖了这场可怕灾难背后的真实情况。

1986年4月26日凌晨，切尔诺贝利核电站的第四号反应堆发生爆炸，引发了人类历史上严重的核灾难。在此后的30年，切尔诺贝利已经成为全世界的集体梦魇：此地已经浓缩成了某些符号——核辐射幽灵般的恐惧，不受控制的危险技术，生态的脆弱性，还有当一个毫无诚信、粗心大意的国家让它的民众和整个世界陷入危险时会发生什么。但是，关于这场事故的真相，由于从zui初就被保密、宣传和错误信息等种种所掩盖，长期都处于争论之中。

《切尔诺贝利的午夜：世界大规模核灾难背后的故事》的素材是来自亚当·希金博特姆十多年来进行的数百小时、80多次采访，以及许多信件、未出版的回忆录和近年来刚刚解密的档案。受访者包括科学家、卡车司机、消防员、医生、寡妇还有幸存者。希金博特姆的叙述令人痛彻心扉，同时又引人入胜，他通过当年亲历之人的双眼，将这场灾难栩栩如生地再现，将这本书变成了一部非虚构的惊悚作品。与苏联的传说相比，真相更为复杂、更有人性，也更加骇人听闻。

Higginbotham对社会政治话题的处理也比较老道。在他的笔下，20世纪70年代的前苏联并不那么沉闷压抑：在许多前苏联人民眼中，社会流动性是存在的，筚路蓝缕创造新的城市、工厂和社区也让人有满足感，他们为作为一项大型社会实验的一份子而感到激动万分。

Higginbotham对切尔诺贝利事件后的清扫工作的描写让我们理解，对危机事件的未雨绸缪是多么重要，保存和累积灾难应对经验是多么关键。理解灾难的发生需要科学和技术背景，但是灾难应对措施则要求更高，要有对当地的了解以及生活经验。他表明，这些知识是多么难以捉摸，而在灾难应对的每个层次（物料、技术、科学、组织甚至心理）都免不了进行大量猜测。核燃料去哪儿了？会不会再次爆炸？要动员谁，年轻的士兵，还是中年后备役军人？

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

One of NPR’s Best Books of 2019

Journalist Adam Higginbotham’s definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster—and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters.

Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering history’s worst nuclear disaster. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a masterful nonfiction thriller, and the definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.

Midnight in Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.

媒体推荐

" Superb, enthralling and necessarily terrifying . . . the accident unfurls with a horrible inevitability. Weaving together the experiences of those who were there that night, Higginbotham marshals the details so meticulously that every step feels spring-loaded with tension. . . . Amid so much rich reporting and scrupulous analysis, some major themes emerge. . . . Higginbotham’s extraordinary book is another advance in the long struggle to fill in some of the gaps, bringing much of what was hidden into the light." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“A gripping miss-your-subway-stop read . . . Higginbotham captures the nerve-racked Soviet atmosphere brilliantly.” —The New York Times Book Review

"A compelling, panoramic account."—The Christian Science Monitor

“An account that reads almost like the script for a movie . . . Mr. Higginbotham has captured the terrible drama.” —The Wall Street Journal

"Midnight in Chernobyl is top-notch historical narrative: a tense, fast-paced, engrossing, and revelatory product of more than a decade of research. . . . A stunningly detailed account . . . For all its wealth of information, the work never becomes overwhelming or difficult to follow. Higginbotham humanizes the tale, maintaining a focus on the people involved and the choices, both heroic and not, they made in unimaginable circumstances. This is an essential human tale with global consequences."—Booklist, Starred Review 

"Written with authority, this superb book reads like a classic disaster story and reveals a Soviet empire on the brink. . . . [A] vivid and exhaustive account.”—Kirkus, Starred Review

"This is a highly detailed, carefully documented, beautifully narrated telling of this breathtakingly complex accident and its mitigation. Higginbotham’s handling of the sociopolitical context is also deft." —Nature

“In chilling detail, this book recounts the many missteps of their response to the disaster. . . . Higginbotham compellingly suggests that these flaws all but predicted the calamity—and, in turn, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.” —The New Yorker

"There has been much reporting about the disaster, but no book has so ably and artfully captured the whole story of what happened that night and in the months and years that followed. With meticulous details, careful research and a gripping narrative, Midnight in Chernobyl is a must-read about nuclear power and the end of the Soviet Union." —Time

"Midnight in Chernobyl is wonderful and chilling. . . . Adam Higginbotham tells the story of the disaster and its gruesome aftermath with thriller-like flair. . . . It is a tale of hubris and doomed ambition, featuring Communist party bosses and hapless engineers, victims and villains, confusion and cover-up." —The Guardian

"A riveting, deeply reported reconstruction . . . In this powerful work of reportage, Chernobyl and its aftermath emerge as the Soviet Union’s last stand, containing all the pathologies and passion of that social experiment now lost to history." —The Los Angeles Times

作者简介

亚当·希金波坦，英国作家，美国历史学家。

Adam Higginbotham is a British writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ and Smithsonian. He is the author of MIDNIGHT IN CHERNOBYL. He lives in New York.