Every year, Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, presents the William E. Colby Award, named for the late ambassador and former CIA director, to a first solo work of fiction or nonfiction that has made a major contribution to the understanding of military history, intelligence operations, or international affairs.

This year’s award was presented to Adam Higginbotham for his book, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. Colby Symposium co-founder Carlo D’Este called Midnight in Chernobyl “a masterpiece of great writing.” He continued, “Adam Higginbotham’s superb account of the deadly 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl for the first time reveals the full story of the terror, the tragedy and the cover up of this earth shaking event.”