Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (2005)
Chapter: Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
In writing this book, I have e-mailed, phoned, interviewed, and interrupted the lives of dozens of people in a variety of disciplines and on several continents. In fact, I never learned the names of many of the zone employees—the checkpoint guards, drivers, canteen cooks—whose services and kindness helped make every single trip there memorable. But I would like to thank the following people for contributing to this book by agreeing to be interviewed, escorting me around the zone, responding to queries, providing scientific papers and background material, and/or reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript: Valery Antropov, Oleksandr Berovsky, Svitlana Bidna, Yuri Bondar, M.D. Bondarkov, Kate Brown, Ivan M. Bulavik, Igor Chyzhevski, Tom Hinton, Vitaly Gaichenko, Sergei Gashchak, Marvin Goldman, Oleg Goloskokov, Dmytro Grodzinsky, Volodymyr Kholosha, Sergei Koshelev, Lina Kostenko, Oleksandr Kovtunenko, Askold Krushelnyckyj, Ronya Lozynsky, Lydia Matiaszek, Sergei Mosyakin, Petr Palytayev, Peter Raven, Victor Riasenko, Mykola Rupashchenko, Valery Rybalka, Sergei Saversky, Wayne Scott, Olia Senyuk, Vyacheslav Shestopalov, Maria Shevchenko, Marian Sikora, Bruce Sterling, Andriy Sverstiuk, Genn Saji, John Thomas, Mykola Tkachenko, Ward Whicker, John Wills, Richard Wilson, Denis Vishnevsky, Natalia Yasynetska, Oksana Zabuzhko, and Tatiana Zharkikh.
Thank you to the staff at Chernobylinterinform—especially Rimma Kyselytsia and Maryna Poliakova—for their unfailing accommodation of my sometimes strange requests and to the Los Angeles Times, which published many of the articles that eventually led to the idea for this book.
I would also like to acknowledge the following sources for the
scientific material in the narrative. Any mistakes or misunderstanding of their content are entirely my own fault. V. H. Baryakhtar, ed. Chernobyl: Zone of Alienation, Naukova Dumka (Kiev, 2001) (in Ukrainian). The Bulletin of the Ecological State of the Exclusion Zone, Ukrainian Ministry of Emergencies and the Administration of the Zone of Exclusion and the Zone of Unquestionable (Mandatory) Resettlement (in Ukrainian). The Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident: A Strategy for Recovery. A report commissioned by the UNDP and UNICEF with the support of UN-OCHA and WHO (New York, 2002). Karaoglou et al. The Radiological Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident: Proceedings of the First International Conference, Minsk, Belarus, 18 to 22 March 1996. The European Commission, Directorate-General XII Science, Research and Development (Luxembourg, 1996). Zhores Medvedev. The Legacy of Chernobyl (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, London, 1990). National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Atlas of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Kartohrafia (Kiev 1996).
I am grateful to everyone at the Joseph Henry Press who helped bring this book to life, especially Jeffrey Robbins, who acquired the manuscript.
Special thanks to my agent, Andrea Pedolsky, who believed in me.
