This book covers the events from the construction of the plant to the fall of the Soviet Union, but unlike Serhii Plokhy he does it from the perspective of the people who were actually close enough to absorb the radiation. Mostly he focused on the scientists, workers and liquidators, who had to deal with the clean up. He focused so much on these people that at the beginning of the book there was a list of characters, as if it was a play or something. I've never seen that done with a nonfiction book before, but maybe that was just a quirk of my particular edition.

Now, because I have read Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy I couldn't help but compare these two. Serhii Plokhy covered the construction of the plant and the causes of the explosion itself better then Adam Higginbotham, but Adam didn't just brush of the clean up process. After reading them both I find it that they are both necessary to understand this disaster, just to get all the angles.

Lastly, on to the Voices of Chernobyl to see what the ordinary people had to say about this whole mess.