On the night of April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, marking the beginning of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. Based on more than a decade of work, recordings of hundreds of conversations, personal correspondence, unreleased memoirs and recently declassified archival documents, journalist Adam Higginbotham wrote a beguiling soul and a fascinating work in which we see the Chernobyl disaster through the eyes of its first witnesses. The result was a masterfully made documentary thriller, an exhaustive account of the event that changed history - much more complex, humane and frightening than the myth of Chernobyl, to which we are accustomed. "Chernobyl: The story of the catastrophe" is an indelible picture of one of the greatest misfortunes of the twentieth century and at the same time a document of human resilience and ingenuity, evidence of the hard lessons learned by humanity trying to bend nature to its will - lessons that in the face of the onset of climate change and other threats of our time look not just important, but vital.