Plokhy capably chronicles a disturbing tale, underlining how close the world came to another nuclear catastrophe.
A timely study of how nuclear power plants and the unpredictability of war make for a frightening cocktail.
Of the many awful stories to emerge from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, perhaps the most chilling are those involving nuclear power plants. Plokhy, a Harvard professor who has written about both Ukrainian history and nuclear issues throughout his long career, notes that the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster continue and the area is still contaminated—although the facility is manned by several hundred personnel who have the unenviable job of monitoring and overseeing the reactors. The problem is that the Exclusion Zone constitutes the most direct route from Russia to Kyiv. When the Russians appeared, the outgunned Ukrainian guards and technicians surrendered, but once the invaders were in control, they did not seem to know what to do. Many of the Russian soldiers were unaware of the history of the place, although some had been told that the plant was manufacturing nuclear weapons. It was a tense time for everyone, but when the tide of war turned, the Russians were glad to leave the zone. Another crisis emerged when Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhia plant in the south. The Ukrainians fought and were eventually overwhelmed, but there were fears that the battle might have damaged the plant's safety mechanisms. Innovative repairs prevented any dangerous leaks, but it was a close call. Plokhy manages to cut through the fog of Russian disinformation to keep the complex story straight, and interviews with key figures on the Ukrainian side add a personal dimension. He calls for strict rules to protect nuclear facilities in times of conflict, although there is no guarantee that warring parties would abide.
Plokhy capably chronicles a disturbing tale, underlining how close the world came to another nuclear catastrophe.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781324079415
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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