Challenger

Critics Review

• A masterly example of how meticulous research and adherence to factual detail can build a narrative of almost unbearable suspense. At the same time, with the outcome known from the beginning, the story has the implacable power of tragic inevitability

  Geoff Dyer

• Gripping and memorable, a definitive account of an American tragedy

  Ed Caesar

• Deep research, gripping writing and a chilling story. This is an incredible book

  Tim Harford, author of How To Make The World Add Up

• In a masterful tapestry of science, heroism, and heartbreak, Challenger unfolds the profound narrative of a pivotal moment that reshaped our view of the stars and ourselves. Adam Higginbotham captures the spirit of an era, the weight of ambition, and the indomitable courage of those who dared to reach for the heavens, only to be ensnared by tragedy. A gripping, poignant chronicle that reveals the Challenger disaster in a light never seen before

  Eliot Higgins, author of We Are Bellingcat

• A deeply reported, highly compelling, and richly detailed story of how our highest aspirations can turn into tragedy

  Paul Caruana Galizia, author of A Death in Malta

• Adam Higginbotham is one of the most brilliant reporters of our generation. He has given us another masterpiece in Challenger. Gripping, forensic and unforgettable, it will undoubtedly be one of the best books of the year

  Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling

• Challenger is a masterpiece. The depth and detail in Higginbotham’s research is breathtaking, the picture he paints is textured and vivid but his prose reads like a thriller . . . this book brings together the many threads of the disaster to reveal a modern parable about America at a turning point in history: the gap between the ambitions of its leaders and the reality of what it was. As well as this, it is a story is about human beings: their frailties and dreams, their heroism and weakness and their frustration and suffering as cogs in a machine gone wrong

  Peter Apps, author of the Orwell Prize-winning Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

• There is no let-up in the tension Adam Higginbotham skilfully creates as he uncovers the many missed opportunities to avert the disastrous launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. His remarkable book is testimony to the truth that although technology will sometimes let us down, in the end it is human weakness that creates tragedy and human strength that creates heroism. And like a Greek tragedy you know how it will end, but you cannot stop reading. A truly gripping book

  David Omand, author of How Spies Think and How to Survive a Crisis

• Enthralling, dramatic and utterly comprehensive. Over a twenty-year history that moves at the pace of a thriller, Adam Higginbotham charts the wide-eyed enthusiasm and optimism of a renewed US space program where anything was possible, but which – over time – was fatally eroded by bureaucratic infighting, political pressure and systemic underfunding. In Higginbotham’s masterly hands, we see the heights and disasters made possible by human ingenuity

  Cara McGoogan, author of The Poison Line

• Adam Higginbotham has written a gripping, eye-opening, moving, and finely detailed history of not just an infamous disaster but a whole generation of the Space Age. Picking up where Tom Wolfe left off, this book stands as the fascinating sequel to The Right Stuff, mixing together science, politics, and space exploration and providing a unique window into the lives of those Americans who have reached for the stars. Even though you know how the story ends, you’ll eagerly turn the beautifully written pages wondering what comes next. Challenger is one of the generation’s best non-fiction writers working at the top of his game

  Garrett Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky and Watergate

• Riveting . . . Full of memorable characters, Challenger helps us not only understand what went wrong but also has a deeper human story to tell of hubris, heroism and tragic consequences

  Bookseller

• In this gripping history . . . Higginbotham explores the flaws that plagued the fiendishly complex shuttle design, focusing on the rubber O-rings used to seal joints in the shuttle’s twin solid-fueled booster rockets to prevent catastrophic leaks of hot gas during lift-off . . . lucid and meticulous . . . The result is a beguiling saga of the peril and promise of spaceflight

  Publishers Weekly

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘An invaluable contribution to history . . . tells a compelling story exceptionally well’

  Evening Standard

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘Adam Higginbotham uses all of the techniques of the top-notch longform journalist to full effect. He swoops us into the heart of the catastrophe’

  Guardian

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘Higginbotham’s superb account of the April 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is one of those rare books about science and technology that read like a tension-filled thriller. Replete with vivid detail and sharply etched personalities, this narrative of astounding incompetence moves from mistake to mistake, miscalculation to miscalculation, as it builds to the inevitable, history-changing disaster’

  New York Times

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘Adam Higginbotham’s brilliantly well-written Midnight In Chernobyl draws on new sources and original research to illuminate the true story of one of history’s greatest technological failures – and, along with it, the bewildering reality of everyday life during the final years of the Soviet Union’

  Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History and Red Famine: Stalin's War On Ukraine

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘A definitive book. Adam Higginbotham has written a wonderful and chilling account of how the Chernobyl disaster happened, featuring protagonists and victims, party bosses and hapless engineers, confusion and cover up. The story of how the reactor exploded and its grisly aftermath are told with thriller-like flair’

  Luke Harding, New York Times-bestselling author of Collusion and The Snowden Files

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘In chilling detail, this book recounts the many missteps of their response to the disaster. . . . Higginbotham compellingly suggests that these flaws all but predicted the calamity—and, in turn, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself’

  The New Yorker

• Praise for Midnight in Chernobyl: ‘Wonderful and chilling . . . Adam Higginbotham tells the story of the disaster and its gruesome aftermath with thriller-like flair. . . It is a tale of hubris and doomed ambition, featuring Communist party bosses and hapless engineers, victims and villains, confusion and cover-up

  Guardian