Summer Reading
I've always loved to read. When I was little and first learning to read, my parents made two mistakes: (1) Buying me a membership in a book club and (2) giving me a flashlight. When used well together, it made for a some fine late night reading! Strangely enough, when I would fall asleep reading with the flashlight on, I would wake up the next morning with my book and light on the night stand. Not a word was said about it esp in the summer. When the summer would come, I was allowed to expand my reading to things other than school stuff - usually sports related stories or hot-rod magazines. But always - ALWAYS - reading.
That hasn't change at all. Each day, I read the Wall St Journal. Like I once did with the sports page or the comics, I now turn to their book review in the editorial section. It has become my "go-to" source for finding new reading material and it has not disappointed yet. It leads me to stuff I would never find. And that's what I just finished.
The latest book I've read is "Chernobyl: A History of a Nuclear Catastrophe" written by Harvard professor Sergii Plokhy. Ukranian by birth, this book clearly was close to home for him and it showed. Exceptionally well written and thoroughly researched, this book was a wonderful example of historical writing CAN be. Obviously the center of the story is the disaster itself, but he weaves the story around relationships, a key reality that allows the reader to FEEL the disaster - if that''s even possible.
In April 1986 when the disaster occurred, I was a senior in high school, about a month from graduation. I didn't really understand how serious and cataclysmic this truly was. I knew it was bad, but this book helped me see it for - in essence - the first time.
Plokhy tracks the story backwards in the first several chapters, all the way back to the 1960's when the Russian nuclear energy program was still in development stages. He recounts the disaster in 1957 at another nuclear plant and, much later, makes comparisons to how the Russian government handled the disasters.
The central aspect of the story is the chapters related to the day of the disaster. In excruciating detail, even down to the second, he redevelops the day based on transcripts, interviews and historical record. A painful reading, as the reader you know what they don't - this is the worst nuclear event in the history of mankind. You also learn who lives and who dies as a result. I had to make frequent use of the Kindle dictionary to understand what his terms meant - I'm not a nuclear scientist so many of the terms were specific to understanding how bad it really was and were necessary to understanding it.
There were two significant elements that added to the disaster: (1) The leaders of the Chernobyl plant did not want to have to admit to Moscow how bad this really was so they didn't - not until they absolutely had to. (2) Once Moscow DID know, they were (rightly!) concerned about panic in the region. Thus, they held on to the news endangering millions of lives and reshaping the region for the next 20,000 years.
Plokhy ends with an assertion that, based on his research I cannot argue with. Chernobyl was the gasoline on the fire of the dissolution of the USSR. While it didn't start the fire, the way Chernobyl was handled accelerated the collapse of the USSR in a way nothing else could. I'd never encountered that line of reasoning before and found it very compelling.
All in all, if you like historical reading as much as I do, this is a MUST read!
That hasn't change at all. Each day, I read the Wall St Journal. Like I once did with the sports page or the comics, I now turn to their book review in the editorial section. It has become my "go-to" source for finding new reading material and it has not disappointed yet. It leads me to stuff I would never find. And that's what I just finished.
The latest book I've read is "Chernobyl: A History of a Nuclear Catastrophe" written by Harvard professor Sergii Plokhy. Ukranian by birth, this book clearly was close to home for him and it showed. Exceptionally well written and thoroughly researched, this book was a wonderful example of historical writing CAN be. Obviously the center of the story is the disaster itself, but he weaves the story around relationships, a key reality that allows the reader to FEEL the disaster - if that''s even possible.
In April 1986 when the disaster occurred, I was a senior in high school, about a month from graduation. I didn't really understand how serious and cataclysmic this truly was. I knew it was bad, but this book helped me see it for - in essence - the first time.
Plokhy tracks the story backwards in the first several chapters, all the way back to the 1960's when the Russian nuclear energy program was still in development stages. He recounts the disaster in 1957 at another nuclear plant and, much later, makes comparisons to how the Russian government handled the disasters.
The central aspect of the story is the chapters related to the day of the disaster. In excruciating detail, even down to the second, he redevelops the day based on transcripts, interviews and historical record. A painful reading, as the reader you know what they don't - this is the worst nuclear event in the history of mankind. You also learn who lives and who dies as a result. I had to make frequent use of the Kindle dictionary to understand what his terms meant - I'm not a nuclear scientist so many of the terms were specific to understanding how bad it really was and were necessary to understanding it.
There were two significant elements that added to the disaster: (1) The leaders of the Chernobyl plant did not want to have to admit to Moscow how bad this really was so they didn't - not until they absolutely had to. (2) Once Moscow DID know, they were (rightly!) concerned about panic in the region. Thus, they held on to the news endangering millions of lives and reshaping the region for the next 20,000 years.
Plokhy ends with an assertion that, based on his research I cannot argue with. Chernobyl was the gasoline on the fire of the dissolution of the USSR. While it didn't start the fire, the way Chernobyl was handled accelerated the collapse of the USSR in a way nothing else could. I'd never encountered that line of reasoning before and found it very compelling.
All in all, if you like historical reading as much as I do, this is a MUST read!
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