The No1 Ethical retailer for Books, CD’s, DVD’s & Games
30 Day Refund Guarantee

Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future

Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future

by KateBrown (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2019

    $3.29
Synopsis

The official death toll of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, 'the worst nuclear disaster in history', is only 54, and stories today commonly suggest that nature is thriving there. Yet award-winning historian Kate Brown uncovers a much more disturbing story, one in which radioactive isotopes caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the magnitude of this human and ecological catastrophe has been actively suppressed.

Based on a decade of archival and on-the-ground research, Manual for Survival is a gripping expose of the consequences of nuclear radiation in the wake of Chernobyl - and the plot to cover up the truth. As Brown discovers, Soviet scientists, bureaucrats, and civilians documented staggering increases in cases of birth defects, child mortality, cancers and a multitude of life-altering diseases years after the disaster. Worried that this evidence would blow the lid on the effects of massive radiation released from weapons-testing during the Cold War, scientists and diplomats from international organizations, including the UN, tried to bury or discredit it. Yet Brown also encounters many everyday heroes, often women, who fought to bring attention to the ballooning health catastrophe, and adapt to life in a post-nuclear landscape, where dangerously radioactive berries, distorted trees and birth defects still persist today.

An astonishing historical detective story, Manual for Survival makes clear the irreversible impact of nuclear energy on every living thing, not just from Chernobyl, but from eight decades of radiaoactive fallout from weapons development.

$3.29

Save:$22.15 (87%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 432
 Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 12 Mar 2019
ISBN 10: 0241352061
ISBN 13: 9780241352069
Book Overview: A chilling expose of the international effort to minimize the health and environmental consequences of nuclear radiation in the wake of Chernobyl.

Media Reviews
Manual For Survival is a remarkable book, distinguished by Kate Brown's rare combination of skills: formidable archival history, investigative research, and vivid storytelling. There are parts of this book that grip with the force of a thriller - but again and again, the plot is proved true. A decade's work has gone into uncovering the real human cost of Chernobyl. This is a book about even bigger subjects than the disaster at its core, however: about how politics processes disaster, about the unseen legacies of the 'friendly atom', and about the Anthropocene futures faced by the human species, surviving in an epoch of ruin. -- Robert MacFarlane, author of The Lost Words
This deftly written, impassioned, courageous book should make the world think twice about what's at stake when we unleash nuclear reactions. -- Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
Kate Brown presents a convincing challenge to the official narrative of the Chernobyl disaster. Deeply reported and elegantly written, Manual for Survival is chilling. -- Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Combining the skills of a historian, investigative reporter, and detective Kate Brown has blown the lid off the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and decades of official efforts to suppress its grim truths. Disturbing in its conclusions, destined to incite controversy, Manual for Survival is first-rate historical sleuthing. -- J.R. McNeill, author of The Great Acceleration
Gripping . . . Kate Brown's relentless, tenacious reporting shows that Chernobyl isn't the past at all. Nothing, she makes clear, can stop its radiation from seeping through all attempts to bury the truth, for a long time to come. This deftly written, impassioned, courageous book should make the world think twice about what's at stake when we unleash nuclear reactions. -- Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
This engagingly written book reads like a cold war thriller and uncovers the devastating effects of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters. -- Alison MacFarlane, Director, Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, George Washington University
Author Bio
Kate Brown is the author of A Biography of No Place, which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association for the best book in International History, and Plutopia, which won seven awards, including the Dunning and Beveridge prizes from the American Historical Association for the best book in American history. She is the first historian of the Soviet Union to be nominated to the honorary Society of American Historians, and her research has been funded by the American Academy in Berlin and by Carnegie and Guggenheim fellowships. She teaches environmental and nuclear history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Baltimore County, and lives in Washington, DC.