Much has been written about the strengths and flaws of Chernobyl—the HBO miniseries nominated for 19 Emmys that chronicles the catastrophe at the eponymous Russian nuclear power plant in 1986. In the mind of this reviewer, it’s a riveting if sobering television gem, and highly recommended.
And to this newly enlivened debate over nuclear power we can now add Kate Brown’s book, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, a tour de force about the radiological aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. A science historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown peels away the layers of long-held mythologies—that in the end, the accident only killed 54 people, and that “radiation phobia” among the people who sustained heavy radioactive fallout was a bigger problem than any of the other health outcomes.
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