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Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition

by Kate Brown (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 225 ratings
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Winner of the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History

Winner of the Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction

Finalist for the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage



"A magisterial blend of historical research, investigative journalism, and poetic reportage…[A]n awe-inspiring journey." —Economist


After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, international aid organizations sought to help the victims but were stymied by post-Soviet political roadblocks. Efforts to gain access to the site of catastrophic radiation damage were denied, and the residents of Chernobyl were given no answers as their lives hung in the balance. Drawing on a decade of archival research and on-the-ground interviews in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, Kate Brown unveils the full breadth of the devastation and the whitewash that followed. Her findings make clear the irreversible impact of man-made radioactivity on every living thing; and hauntingly, they force us to confront the untold legacy of decades of weapons-testing and other catastrophic nuclear incidents.

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  1. ISBN-13
    978-0393357769
  2. Edition
    Reprint
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  5. Publication date
    March 12, 2019
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    3591 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A gripping book part scientific exploration, part Cold War thriller...Brown's in-depth research and clean, concise writing illuminate the reality behind decades of 'half-truths and bald-faced lies.'

-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"

"[A] humane and strange book about the irreversible things a technological disaster does to people and landscapes."

-- " New Statesman"

"This engagingly written book reads like a cold war thriller and uncovers the devastating effects of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters."

-- "Alison MacFarlane, director, Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, George Washington University"

"A magisterial blend of historical research, investigative journalism and poetic reportage...an awe-inspiring journey."

-- "The Economist"

"There have been several good books recently about Chernobyl...Brown wants to examine the present and the science around it...[and] she makes her case comprehensible to the general reader."

-- "The Times (London)"

"Brown's page-turner skillfully weaves an original narrative on the long-term medical effects of the Chernobyl disaster."

-- "Nature"

"Explosive, exquisitely researched...Brown's prose is sometimes technical but largely accessible and even turns poetic when she describes changed lives...This sobering book should be read--and studied--by policymakers and citizens...to spark a renewed debate over nuclear power."

-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"

"Brown is interested in the aftermath of Chernobyl, not the disaster itself. Her heroes are not first responders but brave citizen-scientists, independent-minded doctors and health officials, journalists, and activists who fought doggedly to uncover the truth."

-- "New York Review of Books"

About the Author

Christina Delaine is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator and accomplished stage actress. Her theater credits include Jewtopia, the longest-running comedy in Off-Broadway history, and the title role in Antigone at both Portland Center Stage and Kentucky Repertory Theatre. She holds a BA degree from Dartmouth College and an MFA in acting from Brown University.



Kate Brown is an award-winning historian of environmental and nuclear history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her book Plutopia won seven academic prizes, and Manual for Survival was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07DP6GCB5
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (March 12, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 12, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3591 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 415 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0393652513
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 225 ratings

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Kate Brown

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
225 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Michael K. Stenstrom
5.0 out of 5 stars Later Consequences
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2019
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I am an environmental engineering professor at a major research university and I've read about everything I can find on Chernobyl. Most of what's available describe the accident and the immediate cleanup, The accident itself is tragic enough with many people being exposed to high levels of radiation and suffering acute radiation sickness. This book, and two more I've recently read, describe the aftermath, 10 and 20 years later. Until about 1990, it was forbidden for physicians to attribute sicknesses to radiation exposure. As a result, the population living around Chernobyl were exposed to varying amounts of radiation, particularly through contaminated food. Therefore many people, unaware of contamination, received varying, long term exposures with different health effects. Contamination was hard to predict because of the complicated patterns of winds and rain during the releases. The lack of scientific controls and data, along with government secrecy means that cause and effect relationships that epidemiologists expect to find are obscured. As a result the deaths and injuries attributed to Chernobyl are small, limited to the trauma deaths during the reactor accident and the deaths due to acute radiation exposure. This book tells the story of the following events where many citizens of Ukraine and Belarus suffered chronic, life-shortening diseases, usually with inadequate diagnosis and support. The author also describes the activities of various international organizations, particularly the IAEA, to determine the health effects and their causes. She implies that these agencies biased their findings on thyroid cancer because of fears that elevated findings would open new investigations of other exposed populations. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Chernobyl and the final history of the Soviet Union. It's a good read.
35 people found this helpful
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Rosebud
5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional guide to understanding a world forever transformed by nuclear fission
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2019
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Kate Brown's extraordinary tenacity and acuity in archival research and interviews, expressed through her honest, engaging prose, have provided us with the first thorough and coherent account of the Chernobyl disaster. It illuminates the hobbles placed by the terms of the Life Span Study of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb victims in pursuing the health effects of nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl--hobbles that also exploited in providing grounds for denial of harms, continuing through the treatment of Fukushima--wherein abstract dosimetric models permit the dismissal of the overwhelming presence of a panoply of illnesses. She shows us how Soviet-era bureaucracies operate in the face of such a challenge alongside the multi-armed operations of US and international agencies. It is an exceptionally detailed, principled account, with historical depth, of what Japanese have come to call the "nuclear village." Brown also shows us the many heroes, both named and nameless, who tried to grasp what was happening on the ground, to record it, and to devise means of help those living with the endless consequences of the disaster. The book concludes by challenging us to concretely envision what facing up to our contaminated reality might mean. This is a work of superb scholarship and a work of courage. It is also an urgent work as leaders present us--again--with the fantasy of usable nuclear weapons and conveniently sized, safe reactors.
Norma Field
20 people found this helpful
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Kate L. Newbill
4.0 out of 5 stars Well-researched, but not quite what I expected
Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2022
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Out of curiosity, I've been reading about Chernobyl and its aftermath. This book looked like a thorough treatment of the impacts of the radiation release upon the country and people.

The writing is part first-person, describing her journey through villages, archives, letters, and interviews with those who were there; and part a detached analysis of the data she gleaned. I found the divisions between the points of view a bit jarring at times.

She was obviously horrified at some occurrences related to Soviet state secrecy, such as the disposal of radioactive livestock and crops in a "sweep under the rug" fashion. I skipped squeamishly over detailed descriptions in the chapter on sausage-making.

Is it well-written? Yes.

Are her conclusions valid? I don't know, since most of her sources are still classified or otherwise unavailable. I did get the impression about halfway through the book that she allowed her horrified initial reactions to guide and determine later research and conclusions.

All in all, the book was not what I expected. I don't say it's valueless, and it revealed much beyond most of other books on the subject. But in future I'll use it as reference for discovered fact instead of opinions.
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Cynthia Folkers
5.0 out of 5 stars Espcially important for the archival information it reveals
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2019
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I have researched Chernobyl radiation's chronic, low-dose health impacts for decades. I always wondered what happened to the data collected at the local and regional level in the FSS. Now I know at least part of the answer thanks to Kate Brown's book. The data were "disappeared" both by Soviet structures and by Western scientists. Whole databases went missing as did tissue samples. Scientists were jailed. And we are left with the half-formed narrative we have today on Chernobyl.

Increases of childhood leukemia (Switzerland) and impaired neural development and lowered IQ (Sweden and Norway) are just some of the low-dose legacies Chernobyl has left us. Imagine what is happening in areas in the FSS. Unfortunately, we will have to imagine in some instances. And Kate Brown's book reveals, in part, why.

Unlike other posters who rated this one star and are nuclear power proponents, I will tell you who I am.
Cindy Folkers, Radiation and Health Specialist, Beyond Nuclear
28 people found this helpful
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Rex Stevens
5.0 out of 5 stars Review of Kate Brown’s account of the disaster at Chernobyl.
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2022
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Kate Brown’s book on Chernobyl is the best account of this horror so far. The account is both “telescopic” and “microscopic.” I have read several accounts of this engineered disaster but none of them are as clearly written, comprehensive, and as accurate as Kate Brown’s.
One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

cris
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. A must read!
Reviewed in the Netherlands on January 28, 2023
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An excellent book documenting the grim consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident as well as the official coverup. A must read!
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Wall-E
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book - Similar to Silent Spring
Reviewed in Canada on August 25, 2020
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This book is very well written and reminds me of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring"
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Lara
5.0 out of 5 stars We should probably all be very worried
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2019
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I suppose everyone knows virtually everything about the Chernobyl accident these days, I sure thought I did: I've been obsessed with it since it happened when I was a child. But a lot of people - myself included - probably aren't aware of what happened AFTER, and indeed what is happening still, because Chernobyl isn't over for us yet. That's the main focus of this book: if you want to learn about the actual Chernobyl accident there are plenty of good books about that, but what this book focuses on is what happened After. It's not flashy, it's clearly been a long slog for the author to dig up the history - in some cases she was the first western researcher to access some of the archives - but I couldn't put it down and the depth of the research is really impressive.
We tend to think of events like Chernobyl, Fukushima and nuclear bomb testings as single points in history, but the author is suggesting we should instead recognise them for what they are: part of a larger tapestry which, when viewed as a whole, is actually quite terrifying. According to the author, sixty-six nuclear accidents occurred in Ukraine alone in the year after Chernobyl blew, by way of example. The book doesn't stop at Chernobyl either, exploring what the author describes as a "blanketing" of the entire northern hemisphere by nuclear fallout due to nuclear tests and accidents of which Chernobyl is just a piddly one. The author asserts, for example, that fallout of radioactive iodine from atmospheric detonations of nuclear bombs in Nevada dwarfed Chernobyl emissions three times over. Let that sink in.
As the book explains so eloquently, industry accidents are difficult and expensive to clean up. And the alternative is what we are living with after Chernobyl: An alarming litany of catastrophic incompetence and disingenuousness by governments (quelle surprise) and international organisations including the UN and WHO (organisations I suspect many of us have naively trusted... right up until about halfway through this book, I suspect). They haven't exactly covered themselves in glory: the author's description of how UN, EU and US agencies actively worked to downplay and diminish research which suggests the aftermath of Chernobyl was worse and wider than previously thought, leaves the reader coldly horrified. The book raises concerns about a complete lack of understanding in these organisations of the health effects of long term exposure to chronic low levels of radiation, and an unwillingness to learn.

The book mentions one incident where European Economic Community agreed to buy a disputed shipment of contaminated wheat after the Chernobyl incident, which they then mixed with clean grain and shipped to Africa and East Germany as aid. With friends like these, we hardly need enemies.

If this book is even half correct, we should all be very worried.
8 people found this helpful
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gordon mcdowell
2.0 out of 5 stars Hard to put down, yet contains non-credible assertions regarding radiation dose-response.
Reviewed in Canada on March 19, 2019
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The media could not be loaded.
 Kate Brown's book is a compelling read beyond the mandatory play-by-play of the Chernobyl accident itself... Brown uncovers some new "Liquidator" records, and her interview of contaminated wool factory workers is fascinating/horrifying.

However, Brown's book also calls into question basic dose estimation, it ignores all the measurements conducted in the years after the accident both in the former Soviet countries and abroad, and unquestioningly trusts some researchers, while being deeply skeptical of others.

"I was shocked and disappointed to find that the information and opinions I had given on radiation effects on wildlife at Chernobyl had been dismissed. According to Brown, I was a physicist (used almost as a term of abuse in the context) who didn’t feel it necessary to go to Chernobyl to draw my pre-formed conclusions about the accident effects. Brown did not report what I had told her – I first studied Chernobyl fallout in the English Lake District in 1990 and first did fieldwork in the Chernobyl affected areas of Ukraine and Belarus in 1994... Brown dismisses the evidence of my colleagues (including Belarussian scientists) and me by calling me a physicist and implying that I have never been to Chernobyl."
- Jim Smith, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth

"Brown takes the views of the ‘usual suspects’ into account, but dismisses mainstream science where there is peer review, and accountability. The 'usual suspects' tell a good story – but without a shred of evidence from studies that are appropriately powered and controlled for confounders."
- Dr. Geraldine Thomas, professor of pathology at Imperial College London, Founder of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank

When asked by Michael Shellenberger to defend some of the claims in Manual For Survival, Kate Brown cited a chapter from a Dr. Helen Caldicott book. Brown suggested Shellenberger call Dr. Helen Caldicott.

Having reviewed hours of Dr. Helen Caldicott lectures, I know that she is not a source of accurate information. And Manual for Survival, once past the Chernobyl retelling, and past Brown's own interviews with Liquidators, takes the Caldicott approach of questioning motivations, making poor assumptions about research practices, and the making of untrue statements which could easily have been fact-checked.

"I was further shocked to read in this Chernobyl book Brown’s bald statement that radiation is the only known cause of myeloid leukemia, in the context clearly implying (wrongly) that there are no other causes."
- Jim Smith

"There have been many very careful studies conducted at huge expense over many years and it is a shame that she dismisses these and concentrates on contentious studies carried out by others that are not highly regarded within their own community."
- Dr. Geraldine Thomas

"Brown claims that the evidence collected and assembled by Greenpeace is more reliable than the evidence collected by hundreds of scientists working under the auspices of the UN and other international agencies."
- Michael Shellenberger

I've personally seen Dr. Helen Caldicott and Greenpeace make flat-out untrue statements regarding nuclear power. If Kate Brown wishes to "present both sides" and let the reader decide who is more credible, that is certainly one approach to writing a book. But only the Caldicott assumptions of Chernobyl's impact are fully articulated in Manual For Survival.
15 people found this helpful
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Peter W.
5.0 out of 5 stars The Nuclear Truth
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2020
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I now know the truth not only about Chernobyl but how All world governments lied and covered up the damage they did to the worlds population by nuclear means during my 75 years due to this book.
It should be read by all thinking adults.
The first nuclear reactor disaster was in the UK in the 50s at Windscale.
The powers that be covered it up.
A brilliant book.
2 people found this helpful
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