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program: https://us0
2web.zoom.us/j/86729940136?pwd=aTlsR2h0eVNpRTA2VHpBc1V5TzN6dz09
Meeting ID: 867 2994 0136
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This question and answer session with the author will be moderated b
y Christopher Korenowsky\, \;the Director of Public Services for the S
omerset County Library System.
In 2006&mdash\;the twentie th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl&mdash\;Adam Higginboth am\, then a reporter on assignment\, traveled to Russia and Ukraine\, sear ching for surviving witnesses to the accident. He discovered that the vers ion of events widely accepted in the West was incomplete\, often incorrect \, and colored by misinformation and propaganda. The real story\, he found \, was more complex\, human\, and terrifying than the myth.
\nBased on research conducted over the course of more than ten years\, Higginbotha m&rsquo\;s "Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World&rsquo\;s Greatest Nuclear Disaster" provides the first complete account of the cata strophe that encircled the world\, and helped precipitate the fall of the Soviet Union. Higginbotham draws upon recently declassified documents\, le tters\, unpublished memoirs and material from the archives of the Chernoby l Museum in Kiev\, as well as scores of original interviews with participa nts in the events of 1986. These include former Soviet ministers\, state i nvestigators\, KGB officers\, pilots\, and soldiers\, as well as the scien tists\, nuclear engineers\, plant workers\, and ordinary citizens whose li ves were changed forever. Many of these have never before spoken to a West ern journalist. The result is the definitive account that breaks through t he propaganda\, secrecy\, and myth to reveal the truth about one of the tw entieth century&rsquo\;s greatest disasters.
\nHigginbotham&rsquo\;s exhaustive reporting allows the reader to experience the incident through the eyes of those who lived it\, from the ambitious young station directo r who first envisioned the power station in a snow-covered field in rural Ukraine\, to the control room engineers who unwittingly prompted its destr uction\; from the city officials and government ministers who oversaw the mass evacuation and cleanup\, to the ordinary citizens who struggled throu gh it all to keep their families safe. It is a story of heroics and incomp etence\, hubris and ingenuity\, institutional weakness and human resilienc e.
\n\;Higginbotham also positions Chernobyl as a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union\, and the U.S. victory in the Cold War . For Moscow\, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With an estimated final cost of 18 billi on rubles&mdash\;at the time equivalent to $18 billion&mdash\;Chernobyl fu rther strained the teetering Soviet economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies.
\n\;Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
\n\;A New York Tim es Best Book of the Year.
\n\;A Time Best Book of the Year.
\n\;A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.
\n\nAt the conclusion of the program please feel free to take a brief on
line survey here:
https://www.projectoutcome.org/responses/52067
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