Research Catalog

Title

Wormwood forest : a natural history of Chernobyl / Mary Mycio.

Author

Mycio, Mary.

Publication

Washington, D.C. : Joseph Henry Press, [2005], ©2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 259 pages : illustrations, map; 24 cm

Summary

"Today, 20 years after the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, intrepid journalist Mary Mycio dons dosimeter and camouflage protective gear to explore the world's most infamous radioactive wilderness. As she tours the Zone to report on the disaster's long-term effects on its human, faunal, and floral inhabitants, she meets pockets of defiant local residents who have remained behind to survive and make a life in the Zone. And she is shocked to discover that the area surrounding Chernobyl has become Europe's largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing - at times unearthly - wilderness teeming with large animals and a variety of birds, many of them members of rare and endangered species. Like the forests, fields, and swamps of their unexpectedly inviting habitat, both the people and the animals are all radioactive. Cesium-137 is packed in their muscles and strontium-90 in their bones. But quite astonishingly, they are also thriving." "If fears of Apocalypse and a lifeless, barren radioactive future have been constant companions of the nuclear age, Chernobyl now shows us a different view of the future. A vivid blend of reportage, popular science, and illuminating encounters that explode the myths of Chernobyl with facts that are at once beautiful and horrible, Wormwood Forest brings a remarkable land - and its people and animals - to life to tell a unique story of science, surprise, and suspense."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Radioisotopes > Environmental aspects > Chornobylʹ Region
• Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986 > Environmental aspects
• Radioisotopes > Health aspects > Chornobylʹ Region
• Kernrampen
• Natuur
• Milieueffecten
• 4.950

Note

• Includes index.

ISBN

0309094305 (cloth)

LCCN

2005012715

OCLC

• ocm60420176
• SCSB-5277600

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries