I. Wormwood -- 1. Congress -- 2. Road to Chernobyl -- 3. Power plant -- II. Inferno -- 4. Friday night -- 5. Explosion -- 6. Fire -- 7. Denial -- III. Atop the volcano -- 8. High Commission -- 9. Exodus -- 10. Taming the reactor -- IV. Invisible enemy -- 11. Deadly silence -- 12. Exclusion zone -- 13. China syndrome -- 14. Counting lives -- V. Reckoning -- 15. War of words -- 16. Sarcophagus -- 17. Crime and punishment -- 18. Writers' block -- 19. Nuclear revolt -- 20. Independent atom -- 21. Global shelter.

"On 26 April 1986 at 1.23 am a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. While the authorities scrambled to understand what was occurring, those living in the area were abandoned to their fate. The blast put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, contaminating over half of Europe with radioactive fallout.

In Chernobyl, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy draws on recently opened archives to recreate these events in all their drama, telling the stories of the scientists, workers, firefighters, policemen and politicians who found themselves caught in a nuclear nightmare. While the immediate cause of the accident was a turbine test gone wrong, Plokhy shows how the deeper roots of Chernobyl lay in the nature of the Soviet political system. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing them back to the authoritarian character of Communist party rule, the regime's control of scientific information and its emphasis on economic development over ecological and humanitarian concerns. Only five years later, the Soviet Union would fall apart, destroyed from within by its discredited ideology and its dysfunctional systems.

A moment-by-moment account of the heroes, perpetrators and victims of a tragedy, Chernobyl is the first full account of a gripping, unforgettable Cold War story." Taken from dust jacket.