Published to coincide with the second anniversary of the most terrible nuclear accident to date, this is an unanswerable indictment of those who continue to preach the cause of nuclear power. The authors set the disaster in the context of the ailing Soviet economy and its leaders' apparent disregard for the environment; what makes their book so vivid and so effective is the use they make of contemporary Ukrainian reports - many of which were fiercely critical of official incompetence and dissimulation, as well as providing first-hand accounts from survivors and rescue workers. Combining informal analysis of what actually went wrong with a terrifying evocation of what it is like to live through (or die from) a nuclear accident, this is the most urgent of all cautionary tales...