Ablaze Audiobook By Piers Paul Read cover art

Ablaze

The Story of Chernobyl

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Ablaze

By: Piers Paul Read
Narrated by: Miles Meili
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $24.95

Buy for $24.95

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

The best-selling author presents a heart-pounding account of the world's greatest nuclear disaster, based on sources not available before the fall of the Soviet Union. Read's enthralling account is filled with acts of courage - and also bumbling confusion, secrecy, lies, and coverups. Read spent many months in Russia interviewing hundreds of survivors and experts.

©1993 Piers Paul Read (P)2019 Audible, Inc. Disaster Relief Social Sciences
Well-researched Information • Fascinating Accounts • Pleasant Voice • Engaging Narrative Voice • Complete Work
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
Read this in hardback. Was glad to see it in Audible. Good thorough account of what happened that day. My one little complaint is most of the firefighters who died were referred to as "the fireman" instead of by name. The book is brimming with names for others involved in the tragedy. The firefighters deserve to be named as well.

Thorough Accout

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent book. At times, the reader can be a little monotonous but it's not often. If you want to know about the accident at Chernobyl, this book is great. I've read/listened to over 20 books about Chernobyl and there was info in this book I've never seen anywhere. It goes into great detail without being "preachy." He lets the reader decide for themselves and even gives figures without gloom and doom. Overall, it's an amazing book.

Great Info About Chernobyl

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A few new tidbits and overall a decent focus on the people involved.

One note though. If you know certain pronunciations, the one's the narrator gets wrong might just be so annoying as to put you off the entire book. In particular, his pronunciation of "Gorbachev" changes subtly every time he says it and somehow or another he gets it wrong ever time and i think he gets it more wrong as he goes along.

He's got a very pleasant voice and good delivery but it's so very striking when you come across these kind of mangled pronunciations of things that aren't terribly obscure. Kind of ruins the whole I'm listening to an "expert" type thing.

Food for thought.

Decent but that narrator though....

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book was well researched with a lot of information and well worth the read, some spots drag a bit and it becomes just a bit difficult to follow but it sorts itself out and gets back on track. Not sure but it went from Russian to WWII then back to nuclear facilities then back to how corrupt the Russians are. Look the United States has its problems too, specially with telling the truth and getting information out there to its people. I guess that all this finger pointing is redundant and that yea there was a disaster at this facility and the only thing that caused it was human error. That’s what we wanted to hear was the disaster at this plant not a history lesson or how corrupt government is (all government). The US has had its nuclear problems as well.

Was in Western Europe at that time.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
well written and well read. provides different information and perspectives than some other books on the subject.

Excellent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This was a very informative book. The writing was very engaging and it explained complex science in a way even I could understand. The only thing that frustrated me was the narration. While the narrattor was good for every other purpose, the Russian names were a distracting miss.

Good listen!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have read many, many works on Chernobyl. As of the time of writing I consider Higinbotham's, Midnight in Chernobyl and Plokhii's Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Disaster to be the seminal works on the subject. However, much credit must go to Read's Ablaze as it was written so soon after the disaster and in the midst of the fall of the Soviet Union. We know a lot more about the situation at Chernobyl since this book was published, but much respect is due to him starting the literary cadence of works on the subject. Also notable is the narrative voice this book unfolds through; similar to his other works it is supremely engaging.

Pre-Higinbotham Pre-Plokhii #1 Work on the Subject

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book regarding the Chernobyl nuclear disaster differs from other books on the same subject that I have read. Like many works on Chernobyl, time is spent discussing the rise of nuclear power in the USSR, and the accident at the power plant. However, more than most projects, a good deal of time is spent on the aftermath, especially its impact on people and the Soviet system itself.

Filled with fascinating accounts and first-hand reports on what would lead to the fall of the USSR, "Ablaze" is an all-around complete work by a well-regarded author. I highly recommend.

Excellent Portrait of Chernobyl and More

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This book used the repeated use of full names to take up page length. Name after name and full institutional titles when the stand abbreviations would do. Also, the narrator’s attempt to pronounce all the names with accents was distracting and pointless.

Too much filler

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I became ore and more frustrated as the book went along. Sure, there’ some interesting information regarding the Chernobyl disaster. But it is buried under the amount of worthless information. Should I care if so and so has a piano and his friend comes over to play it? Do I need to know what the wall decorations are in someone’s home? Must I really hear about the “Writer’s Association”? These are just a few instances of the overwhelming useless stuff you’ll find here. And you need to be ready to be inundated by Russian names. Even trying to take notes on who is who won’t help. The longer the book went on, the sooner I hoped it would end and put me out of my misery.Finally I just gave up. I can only take so much.

A load of worthless information

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews