Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future

Kate Brown's book "Manual for Survival" reveals the suppressed truth about the Chernobyl disaster, uncovering hundreds of thousands of casualties caused by radioactive isotopes. The book is a gripping historical detective story that highlights the real consequences of the disaster and the plot to cover it up.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 05 March 2020
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear disaster in history, has an official death toll of 54. However, award-winning historian Kate Brown reveals a more disturbing story. She uncovers a magnitude of the disaster that has been actively suppressed, with radioactive isotopes causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Soviet scientists, bureaucrats, and civilians documented staggering increases in birth defects, child mortality, cancers, and other life-altering diseases. Worried that this evidence would expose the effects of radiation release from Cold War weapons-testing, scientists and diplomats from international organizations, including the UN, tried to bury or discredit it. Brown also encounters many everyday heroes, often women, who fought to bring attention to the growing human and ecological catastrophe and adapt to life in a post-nuclear landscape, where the dangerous effects of radiation persist today.

Based on a decade of archival and on-the-ground research, Manual for Survival is a gripping historical detective story that brings to light the real consequences of Chernobyl and the plot to cover them up. The book is troubling, passionately written, and deeply researched. It has received critical acclaim, including being named a National Book Critics Circle Finalist in 2019.

Weight: 316g
Dimension: 129 x 196 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780141988542