Scan barcode
ryan_oneil's review against another edition
5.0
This is a well-written and well-researched book about the Chernobyl reactor accident. The book examines what happened to people in the areas around the disaster site, both near and far.
Kate Brown did the work. She looked in the archives and interviewed survivors. She spent years doing research. She tells a story about the Soviet government made things work in the immediate aftermath. Then, she tells the story about how the West made the problem worse after the USSR dissolved.
This book felt like a combination of the book I read about the 1918 flu pandemic and the book about the effects of the Nagasaki atomic bombing. People protecting their own interests and then making it about not wanting to panic the public.
Brown, in no certain terms, places blame and there's a LOT of blame to go around. There's even blame prior to the reactor meltdown and explosion -- US and USSR atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons put the entire world at increased risk for health problems.
Kate Brown did the work. She looked in the archives and interviewed survivors. She spent years doing research. She tells a story about the Soviet government made things work in the immediate aftermath. Then, she tells the story about how the West made the problem worse after the USSR dissolved.
This book felt like a combination of the book I read about the 1918 flu pandemic and the book about the effects of the Nagasaki atomic bombing. People protecting their own interests and then making it about not wanting to panic the public.
Brown, in no certain terms, places blame and there's a LOT of blame to go around. There's even blame prior to the reactor meltdown and explosion -- US and USSR atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons put the entire world at increased risk for health problems.
laurapk's review against another edition
2.0
A different perspective on the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, as well as the consequences of nuclear proliferation, which is unfortunately weakened in my opinion by the author's heavy handed conclusions and strong biases. Had she trusted the reader more to draw their own conclusion, I would have given the book more stars. Another reason why I don't trust all her conclusions are some questioning statements such as (parphrasing here) 'at least the Belarusian dictatorship is not one of bad taste' (because they don't use gaudy propaganda; because that's how you judge a dictatorship, not by the abuses on its citizens, but by its taste in convening messages)
"Manual for Survival" challenges the narratives unfolding several decades after the tragedy of 1986 - no, the effects of the blown nuclear reactor were not minor: not on the land, not on the people, not on the incidence of cancer. The author doesn't stop at the boarder drawn by the Soviet scientists either - she exits the zone of alienation and fallows the fallout in Ukraine and Belarus, and....crosses the boarder again into "innocent bystander's" territory (the USA, France, etc). Kate Brown makes an excellent point: the Chernobyl disaster was not an isolated nuclear accident, it was just one example of radioactive rain down, not much different from atomic bomb tests around the world, carried out in the 20th century in the name of freedom and pacifism. Kate Brown paints the picture of alarmed locals and Soviet scientists requesting medical attention, of an indifferent international response from the World Health Organization whose sponsors didn't have an interest in acknowledging the effects of chronic exposure to low doses of radiation since that would awaken skeletons out of European and American closets. She explains why radioactive fallout was concentrated in living plants, then grazing animals and travels, even today, up the chain to top predators and humans. And reading this as Chadwick Boseman's death is announced, and accompanied by statistics saying that colon cancer has seen a significant rise in young patients since the mid 80s, one can only ask if the association between the increased radiation in our food and the epidemic of cancer in young people across the globe aren't causally linked.
However, the book's strength is sapped by the author's infatuation for the old communist system and her unveiled dislike of capitalism. Several times throughout the book, the author expressed a strong belief in the superiority of the Soviet system - the same system that built an incredibly unstable reactor, whose economy crashed prior to 1989 (unlike the author, I lived the majority of my life in a former communist country and I can say, the economic crash preceded the revolutions and the USSR dissolution, not the other way around. It's just that there was an even more severe crash when benevolent westerners got involved). Examples of questionable admiration for the Soviet system and eye-rolling dislike of capitalism include:
"By presenting the nation in need the filmmakers walked right into the buzz saw of westerners' arguments about failed Soviet medicine and the alleged graft and incompetency of the Socialist system"
"They used the English word [biznesmen] because Russian had no equivalent to describe an entrepreneur who obeys no laws and protects his wealth with mercenaries
While I acknowledge that the top 1% is getting shameful, the rhetoric here veers into propaganda.
I'm not sure how correct the science the author presents is. I found one clear mistake: in the chapter "The Pieta" the author mentions an American study which reported the children in Ukraine's contaminated areas had more cavities than children in clean areas. The claim is there endocrine glands secrete less saliva, thus altering the mouth's microflora. Endocrine glands secrete hormones directly into the blood; salivary glands are exocrine glands, who release their secretions in a cavity or outside the body.
But the author does make some very good points. Tourists visit the zone of alienation but rarely pass through the villages outside that were never evacuated. Yet that's where the real drama unfolded after the nuclear accident. And as we're all taking in our patriotic dose of radiation, delivered by radioactive food (berries imported from Ukraine and Belarus, mushrooms, milk and dairy), mixed and moved around so that it's 'cool' enough for consumption, we should make sure that international agencies overseeing nuclear proliferation and nuclear power have our best health in mind.
Her final sentences sum up the main message of the book very well (the secondary message is that communism was good and we should give it a second chance):
"The Soviet medical records suggest it is time to ask a new set of questions that is, finally, useful to people exposed over their lifetimes to chronic doses of man-made radiation from medical procedures, nuclear power reactors and their accidents and atomic bombs and their fallout. Few people on earth have escaped those exposures."
"Manual for Survival" challenges the narratives unfolding several decades after the tragedy of 1986 - no, the effects of the blown nuclear reactor were not minor: not on the land, not on the people, not on the incidence of cancer. The author doesn't stop at the boarder drawn by the Soviet scientists either - she exits the zone of alienation and fallows the fallout in Ukraine and Belarus, and....crosses the boarder again into "innocent bystander's" territory (the USA, France, etc). Kate Brown makes an excellent point: the Chernobyl disaster was not an isolated nuclear accident, it was just one example of radioactive rain down, not much different from atomic bomb tests around the world, carried out in the 20th century in the name of freedom and pacifism. Kate Brown paints the picture of alarmed locals and Soviet scientists requesting medical attention, of an indifferent international response from the World Health Organization whose sponsors didn't have an interest in acknowledging the effects of chronic exposure to low doses of radiation since that would awaken skeletons out of European and American closets. She explains why radioactive fallout was concentrated in living plants, then grazing animals and travels, even today, up the chain to top predators and humans. And reading this as Chadwick Boseman's death is announced, and accompanied by statistics saying that colon cancer has seen a significant rise in young patients since the mid 80s, one can only ask if the association between the increased radiation in our food and the epidemic of cancer in young people across the globe aren't causally linked.
However, the book's strength is sapped by the author's infatuation for the old communist system and her unveiled dislike of capitalism. Several times throughout the book, the author expressed a strong belief in the superiority of the Soviet system - the same system that built an incredibly unstable reactor, whose economy crashed prior to 1989 (unlike the author, I lived the majority of my life in a former communist country and I can say, the economic crash preceded the revolutions and the USSR dissolution, not the other way around. It's just that there was an even more severe crash when benevolent westerners got involved). Examples of questionable admiration for the Soviet system and eye-rolling dislike of capitalism include:
"By presenting the nation in need the filmmakers walked right into the buzz saw of westerners' arguments about failed Soviet medicine and the alleged graft and incompetency of the Socialist system"
"They used the English word [biznesmen] because Russian had no equivalent to describe an entrepreneur who obeys no laws and protects his wealth with mercenaries
While I acknowledge that the top 1% is getting shameful, the rhetoric here veers into propaganda.
I'm not sure how correct the science the author presents is. I found one clear mistake: in the chapter "The Pieta" the author mentions an American study which reported the children in Ukraine's contaminated areas had more cavities than children in clean areas. The claim is there endocrine glands secrete less saliva, thus altering the mouth's microflora. Endocrine glands secrete hormones directly into the blood; salivary glands are exocrine glands, who release their secretions in a cavity or outside the body.
But the author does make some very good points. Tourists visit the zone of alienation but rarely pass through the villages outside that were never evacuated. Yet that's where the real drama unfolded after the nuclear accident. And as we're all taking in our patriotic dose of radiation, delivered by radioactive food (berries imported from Ukraine and Belarus, mushrooms, milk and dairy), mixed and moved around so that it's 'cool' enough for consumption, we should make sure that international agencies overseeing nuclear proliferation and nuclear power have our best health in mind.
Her final sentences sum up the main message of the book very well (the secondary message is that communism was good and we should give it a second chance):
"The Soviet medical records suggest it is time to ask a new set of questions that is, finally, useful to people exposed over their lifetimes to chronic doses of man-made radiation from medical procedures, nuclear power reactors and their accidents and atomic bombs and their fallout. Few people on earth have escaped those exposures."
catherine_louise's review against another edition
4.0
the amount of work that must have gone into this book! I die just thinking of it
cblanc3666's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
rdh217's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
5.0
grownscaredofghosts's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
4.5
This is an incredibly important book that answers a lot of questions about the aftereffects of the Chernobyl disaster and challenges the dominant narrative in a substantive way, and I would recommend it to anyone.
That said, I struggled with the writing/organization. It’s neither straightforwardly chronological nor organized into substantial thematic chapters the way much of scholarly nonfiction is. There are 30-some very short chapters organized into rather loose longer “parts”, organized- I think? Maybe?- by when the author gained the info/talked to individuals, which I found very hard to follow and keep sort of organized/cohesive in my mind as I read. (More so then with her earlier book, Plutopia)
That said, I struggled with the writing/organization. It’s neither straightforwardly chronological nor organized into substantial thematic chapters the way much of scholarly nonfiction is. There are 30-some very short chapters organized into rather loose longer “parts”, organized- I think? Maybe?- by when the author gained the info/talked to individuals, which I found very hard to follow and keep sort of organized/cohesive in my mind as I read. (More so then with her earlier book, Plutopia)