An informative photo book about Chernobyl. Inevitably because of the subject matter it's quite moving and thought provoking.

Cover: It looks like a normal picture until you glance to the right.

I remember the Chernobyl accident quite well. Everything seemed just fine, until haha, ops, it’s better if you stop eating certain foods, go inside when it rains, and the wind might carry radioactive dust, but no biggie? The fact that we were hundreds of miles, if not more, from Chernobyl didn’t seem to matter. There was something out there and it was dangerous. I was a kid back then, but it made a lasting impression; every once in a while, I delve deep into the accident itself and its consequences.

Just for that reason, Chernobyl is a book that couldn’t escape my radar. Besides, it’s an Amber Books book, which means top quality. As always, the pictures are fantastic: I saw a lot of them throughout the years, especially the ones featuring the Exclusion Zone tours, but most of them were amateurish. Chernobyl hosts great historical ones.

Maybe a little more info would have been good, both on the events that lead to the accident—the miniseries on HBO says something along the lines of ‘links in a chain of disaster’?—and the outcome, but this is me splitting hair.

Great and informative read.

5 stars on GR.

An excellent initial exploration of Chernobyl and the disaster. The text gives just enough information to give a pretty complete picture without too much detail. The accompanying photograpy is haunting, to say the least, and there were some photos that I hadn't seen before.

Thankyou to the author, publishers Amber Books Ltd, and NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC.

This is an interesting visual book of the before and after of Chernobyl disaster. I will say there was a lot of information and I was hoping for it to be more of a photography book with minimal text, but obviously it depends what you like.

Like all Chernobyl books there were a lot of scientific terms, words and phrases which completely lost me. This doesn’t take away from the horrendous disaster but it did loose my interest. In some places the layout made the text hard to read but that will just be the arc format.

I confess, I’m a bit obsessed with Chernobyl and will read just about anything about it. That said, this was a solid retelling of the disaster, and the photos were a huge plus. The book was a bit difficult to read in digital format and I would recommend people buy the hard copy to best view all the photos and their captions in a logical manner.

This was a really fascinating read. I've always been really interested in the subject of Chernobyl and this book was perfect for that. There was just the right amount of literature and pictures and I really learned a lot.

This book was brilliant. I just had to read it all in one sitting. The photographs were amazing and gave off a very eerie feeling. The pictures just spoke volumes and created lots of emotions looking at them it was scary at times knowing just how many people were and still are affected by this tragedy. It was also very fascinating to read and learn about as this event happened when I was very young. I loved how it was broken into sections describing what it was like before, during, after the event and what it is like today. It was fantastic to read and learn about it all and it flowed so well. I have read a few books already on this subject. This book seemed to give the information that no other book I have read on the subject has ever covered before. I especially loved learning about the efforts to contain the reactor, how the other reactors were still used after the event and the eye watering costs both economic and environmental. If you really want to learn about this devastating disaster then look no further and read this book I definitely recommend it. I will be looking out for more books by this amazing author. 

So much praise goes out to the author and publishers for creating this stunning account of a very disturbing disaster. 

The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/chernobyl-by-michael-kerigan-amber-books-5-stars either under my name or ladyreading365

“Like God, radiation was invisible but everywhere, in everything. ‘I’m afraid of the rain’ another survivor confessed. ‘That’s what Chernobyl is. I’m afraid of the snow. Of the forest.’ All Creation bore the imprint of the blast.”

My thanks to Amber Books for a temporary digital review copy via NetGalley of ‘Chernobyl’ by Michael Kerrigan in exchange for an honest review.

In the Introduction Michael Kerrigan states that the intention of this book is to provide an comprehensive overview of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and seeks to separate myth from reality.

In essence this is a photographic history containing 180 authentic photographs with captions and linking text that places them in context.

The photographs are undoubtedly powerful presenting a stark reminder of the event and its aftermath, including the massive cleanup operation that called upon hundreds of thousands of ‘liquidators’ made up of civil and military personnel.

These were poignant and shocking- from images of the reactor before the accident, to the ruined reactor, the deserted city of Pripyat, and the fields of abandoned tanks, trucks, buses and helicopters deemed too contaminated to be touched.

I was shocked to read that the radiation released by the Chernobyl blast was estimated to be 400 times of what was released by the Hiroshima bomb…

I was struck how the photos of Pripyat seemed almost like a 20th Century Pompeii as it documented its decaying buildings including a cinema, public swimming pool, and amusement park rides - all frozen in time.

Having recently seen the Chernobyl mini series I was impressed at how well it visually captured the reality of the site both before and after.

Overall, a powerful account that allows the photos to tell the tragic story of April 26th 1986 when the unthinkable happened and the world was forever changed.

With thanks to the author, publishers Amber Books Ltd, and NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC in return for my honest and unbiased review.

This is a useful addition to the by now extensive list of books covering the Chernobyl disaster. It is not nearly as detailed as for example Adam Higginbotham's “Midnight in Chernobyl”, but then that is not the intended thrust of this work. Rather this is a visual history of the before and after states of Chernobyl, Pripyat and Belarus, complemented with some background text at the start of each chapter. As such, this is an ideal starting point for someone with little to no prior knowledge of the Chernobyl disaster who is looking to get a good overview of it.

The pictures are excellent, and really capture both the suddenness with which Pripyat had to be abandoned as as well as the destruction and desolation caused by the disaster to the lands within the exclusion zone. Within the ebook the layout of the pictures did make reading some of the passages of text a little awkward, where in some cases 4-6 pages of pictures were inserted before lines of the same paragraph. A small complaint though, and one which may now be so apparent in the physical book.,

I have always been curious about history. Very recently I started looking into the Chernobyl's nuclear accident.
I liked that this book was easy to understand especially because the innerworks of a nuclear powerplant when explained can be a bit difficult to comprehend. To see the pictures of the nuclear power plant, the lives of people before and after this devastating calamity, definitely made this whole experience even more real and shocking.
It was concise and informative, perfect for people who want to learn the intricate details about this project, the impact it was going to have if the reactor hadn't exploded and the repurcussions of the accident.
Highly recommend to history enthusiasts or anyone who wants to learn about Chernobyl's disaster.

Book Summary: "On 26 April 1986, the unthinkable happened near the Ukrainian town of Pripyat: two massive steam explosions ruptured No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, immediately killing 30 people and setting off the worst nuclear accident in history. The explosions were followed by an open-air reactor core fire that released huge amounts of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere for the next nine days, spreading across the Soviet Union, parts of Europe, and especially neighbouring Belarus, where around 70% of the waste landed. The following clean-up operation involved more than half a million personnel at a cost of $68 billion, and a further 4,000 people were estimated to have died from disaster-related illnesses in the following 20 years. Some 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident (including 95 villages in Belarus), and much of the area returned to the wild, with the nearby city of Pripyat now a ghost town. Chernobyl provides a photographic exploration of the catastrophe and its aftermath in 180 authentic photos. See the twisted wreckage of No. 4 Reactor, the cause of the nuclear disaster; marvel at historic photos of the clean-up operation, with helicopters spraying decontamination liquid and liquidators manually clearing radioactive debris; see the huge cooling pond used to cool the reactors, and which today is home to abundant wildlife, despite the radiation; explore the ghost town of Pripyat, with its decaying apartment blocks, empty basketball courts, abandoned amusement park, wrecked schools, and deserted streets. "

I really enjoyed this book, I've always been fascinated by the accident that happened in Chernobyl. Most of it for having a bit of morbid curiosity, and because I've always loved taking photos of abandoned placed in my old hometown of Brownsville Pa. My dream was always to go to Chernobyl and document it myself. Michael Kerrigan does an amazing job of doing that for me. I really felt the emotions within the photographs in the book.

This is a great book for anyone who is a historian and interested in the tragedy of Chernobyl.

Da kid pretty much has a sub-major already in high school about WWII, but she has a strong minor in Nuclear Energy, so no surprise when this came across my desktop, she eagerly said "OOhh I'll review that one!" LOL

"WOW- this book really condenses into one book both the horror of what happened in 1986 and how nature will take back our land if we let it, giving beauty out of horror. There is SO SO SO much that went wrong and was covered up, that we are still finding out about today, It's hard for my generation to understand this, as we live in the 5 second society, where everything is broadcast on social media as soon as it STARTS occurring. But when Chernobyl happened, it was easy for authorities to lie to the people in the immediate area, both before they moved in and after the incident.

The author does a great job in alternating photos and text to make us understand both how large the community around the site was, and how average it was in many ways. But living on top of a nuclear reactor isn't ordinary, and the photos from right after the incident and modern day, let us see just how tragic the meltdown was. For those of us who have seen many Youtube/Tiktok episodes of the area, the book pictures may seem tame, but when compared to the before pictures, you understand what the author wants to convey. For anyone interested in this part of our collective history, this is a great book to start your education with!

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC to review. This is a very thought provoking photographic account that shares the events that lead to Chernobyl's nuclear disaster, before and after the explosion, and the lasting effects. The photos were both beautiful and haunting and the facts included really added to my knowledge of the disaster. The captions placement were a bit difficult at times , but overall I would really recommend this as a good summary of the events.

I was happy to be offered the opportunity to read Chernobyl by Michael Kerrigan. It is very well written and informative. Very well laid out

This was an informative photogrpahy book of Chernobyl. The disaster is always fascinating, but this book seemed especially relevant due to the war in Ukraine.

This is a fantastic photo essay book.

It features haunting photos of the Chernobly catastrophe. It really paints a picture of the devastation that happens. It only features a real basic history of Chernobyl bit it is a great overview and of the event and the pictures tell a story themselves.

I'm old enough to remember when it happened and what were the impacts on everyday life.
The photos in this books are haunting and eery and they give a clear picture of what happened.
A book that can help to remember the disaster and what could happen again.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Chernobyl… It’s difficult to accept that 36 years have passed since the world’s greatest nuclear disaster.

Most of us have, to some degree, heard of the Chernobyl disaster, but not many know the full story (I don’t think most of us will ever know) or what happened before, during and in the aftermath.

This book gives us an in-depth account of the disaster of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the, at the time, brand new city of Pripyat in Ukraine.

It was the hope and future of clean energy and little after midnight on April 26th 1986 the world was forever changed by the explosions in Reactor 4 of Chernobyl.

At the time, Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, so the full and truthful casualty count has never been disclosed or updated, as the official reports, to this day, only seem to take into account the workers and first responders at the scene on that fateful night.

Through more than 180 real photographic accounts and descriptions, this book shows us what life was like before that day, the modern facilities of this Nuclear Power Plant and the amenities created surrounding it for the workers and families; it shows us the disaster, the direct and indirect side effects of the radiation exposures both in humans and animals, as well as in the soils and nature areas surrounding it. How it expanded to pretty much all of Europe and still has long lasting effects to this day.

And sadly, due to current events, those consequences might have just been aggravated and prolonged for far longer than any of us can imagine.

This book not only details the disaster and direct implications of it, but it also delves into the political side of things, as the Soviet Union and Ukraine itself did not want to fully admit what had happened publicly until much later.

In fact, were it not for foreign news reports, the world might have never known in due time that a nuclear disaster had happened in Chernobyl.


This book was sad, heartbreaking, impactful, detailed and essential.

I sincerely recommend that everyone picks up this book and shares it with future generations, so that what happened may never be forgotten and that, hopefully, through knowledge and awareness, it never happens again.

The book will be officially released on June 14th in all major retailers and I genuinely think everyone should grab a copy of they can.

5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you very much to @NetGalley and Amber Books for granting me access to this advanced copy in exchange for my review and honest opinion.

📸☢📚🏷

#Chernobyl #NetGalley #NonFiction #Photography #History #Ukraine

After just reading Sherhii Plokhy's account of the disaster at Chernobyl last month, I came upon on this book with high expectations. For a picture account of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, I thought there would be more pictures of the before, immediately after the catastrophe and the after. The photos and details enclosed definitely gave me the reaction of "a picture is worth a thousand words," but is a more brief synopsis.

I understand this was more a visual of of everything that happened at Chernobyl so it is not as comprehensive of Plokhy's book or Midnight in Chernobyl. I like this more for the pictures and it is definitely not about the timeline.

Recommended for people not as familiar with the events that occurred at Chernobyl desiring a brief lesson.

Thanks to Netgalley, Michael Kerrington and Amber Books Ltd for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 6/14/22

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion is the human and environmental catastrophe that we shouldn’t forget. We need to remember the horrible consequences of inefficient secretive oppressive system based on fear and coverups and ignoring ecology, safety and common sense.

“So easy was it for the Soviet authorities to cover up bad news (and so habituated had they become to doing this) that there was never any real incentive for management at plants like this to bring in changes.”

It includes 180 photos (or so the cover says) to illustrate the timeline. “Before”, with the photos of the young city of Pripyat, somehow oddly beautiful despite its brutalist concrete style. The photos of the ruined reactor and disaster “liquidators”. The “urban wasteland” with those haunting pictures familiar to many, with devastated ruined buildings, nature overtaking the abandoned city of Pripyat, crumbling exteriors and interiors, and that sad Ferris Wheel that became a common fixture in photos.

“Pripyat isn’t pretty in the way that Pompeii is. It isn’t really interesting, in truth. The attractive stained-glass window of a city café stands out in standing out. Everything else is ordinary, even dull. A silent cinema; rusting railway carriages; a row of empty clubs in the daycare centre; a shattered piano; an abandoned ferris wheel … these are monuments to mundanity. They arrest our attention not because they’re striking or special in any way but because there’s an unbearable pathos in their ordinariness.
Such scenes move us because they show us a modern city drained of its animating spirit, the mere material of an entity that ought to team with life. All the components are present for a thriving, bustling city — except for the people to whom all this was home.”

The aftermath and the present, including the effects on neighboring Belarus that took the brunt of the radiation fallout, having been in the path of the winds and rains. The economic effects and considerations of the cleanup and maintenance and having large areas resettled and deemed uninhabitable, although some still returned.

The accompanying text does a decent job of briefly outlying the disaster, the brief overview of reactor construction issue that precipitated the meltdown, the cleanup, and the lasting economic and health effects.

It’s a good companion to other more technically detailed books with good photos selection for those - like me - who are already exhaustively familiar with the details of the catastrophe and the aftermath, but also a decent primer for those who don’t have much or any knowledge above the events of April 26, 1986 and their consequences.

4 stars.
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Thanks to NetGalley and Amber Books Ltd. for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.