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Wormwood Forest : A Natural History of Chernobyl
By Mary Mycio
Call #: QH543.5 .M93 2005
Location:5th Floor
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Chernobyl, dubbed the "zone of alienation," evokes images of a vast nuclear wasteland. After spending ten years traveling its periphery, Ukrainian American Mycio, a former Kiev correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, presents a starkly different view. With Ukrainian botanists and an eclectic variety of Chernobyl scientists as her guides and the help of a dosimeter measuring radioactivity levels, Mycio recounts her observations of wildlife and flora. Not only are local residents still living there, but the area surrounding Chernobyl has also become Europe's largest wildlife sanctuary, teeming with large animals such as moose, elk, wolves, and 270 bird species (including the rare black stork)-all with no evidence of animal mutations from the radioactivity. In many areas, the native flora have reclaimed much of the cultivated land, with an abundance of the plant wormwood, hence the book's title. In conjunction with the photographs found in Robert Polidori's Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl, one can see the growth of vegetation in the countryside surrounding the zone.
Eva Lautemann, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston
