“If this book doesn’t cause reading groups to go into paroxysms of shock and horror, nothing will..” Review on Newbooksmag of Chernobyl – The Hidden Legacy by Pierpaolo Mittica
Published in 2007 in Gt. Britain I am surprised I hadn’t heard of it before now, but, this just highlights the fact that we live our lives accepting what the media/politicians tell us, and if something drops off the radar, it then gets neatly forgotten by the populace in general. So, based on that assumption, this book most certainly reminds us of the catastrophic disaster that befell Chernobyl over twenty years ago.
This book is mainly a photographic treatise on how the exclusion zone is now, the ghost towns and villages mainly uninhabited, except by those with the need to once again exist where they are familiar with their surroundings. It tells of the global nuclear fallout that still continues today, with maps showing areas most affected. The awful contamination of health in people, land, foodstuffs, but mainly the legacy left for future generations, if any.
I read the book in two shifts; it’s style mainly for the layman. It doesn’t actually contain much of the written word, only what is important, factual, proven and very scary indeed. I, for one do not understand the concept of ’nuclear energy’, so this book helps me, all I know is the disastrous results that seem to keep happening around the world since the advent of the Atomic Bomb in 1945.
We, as a race, cannot dismiss radiation sickness and it’s tumours and cancers, as evidenced by these photographs, we are not immune at all, none of us are, we have all been somehow infected, by ingesting the fallout from Chernobyl and the other ‘nuclear accidents’, but when did you last think about that ? This book certainly made me sit up and take notice, it also makes me want to shout about it from the hilltops, to make people realise what is going on, hidden and unexplained.
If this book doesn’t cause reading groups to go into paroxysms of shock and horror, nothing will..
Reviewed by: Reg Seward
