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Five Past Midnight in Bhopal
by Dominique Lapierre, Javier Moro
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Scribner (2003-02-03)
ISBN: 0743220358
EAN: 9780743220354
Dewy Decimal #: 364
Paperback: 352 pages
SKU: M8512
Condition: Very Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A beautifully written human account of the infamous Bhopal chemical accident, from the bestselling author of CITY OF JOY. It was hailed as a miracle. A cheap, effective solution to India's food shortages, the American pesticide, Sevin, promised the world. And Union Carbide's state-of-the-art factory would provide jobs for the thousands of refugees who came from far and wide to the vibrant, teeming city of Bhopal, dreaming of a better life. But at five past midnight on the night of 3 December 1984, a terrible explosion poured noxious fumes into Bhopal's crowded slums. The apocalypse had begun. With pace and compassion, Lapierre and Moro bring this disaster and its victims to centre stage: the young Padmini who is to be married that night; the advent of Union Carbide and its mission to rescue the Third World; a Scottish nun who risks her life to save lost children; and a poetry lover who unleashes the tragedy. They weave together these and many other stories to tell this epic of love and heroism, catastrophe and consequence. Vivid and compelling, FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL is an unforgettable tale of courage amid disaster.
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Amazon.com Review
On the night of December 3, 1984, a cyanide cloud drifted over the streets of Bhopal, India, set loose by a leak in a nearby chemical plant. When the deadly fog lifted untold numbers of the city's residents--perhaps as many as 30,000, by some accounts--lay dead, while half a million others were injured. Dominique Lapierre, a French journalist and longtime champion of India's poor, joins with Spanish writer Javier Moro to recount the terrors of that night, about which the whole truth may never be known. The deaths are but one part of the authors' long, sometimes elaborate tale, which relates how the industrial conglomerate Union Carbide had come to build its vast chemical complex at Bhopal, one meant to be a glory of technology and, ironically, to save thousands of lives brought low by insect-wrought starvation. There are few villains but many heroes in the authors' account, which explores the margins at which good intentions conflict with the profit motive, at which cost-cutting omissions yield horrifically unintended consequences. It all makes for a thoughtful and disturbing book. --Gregory McNamee
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Customer Reviews
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Friend of the downtrodden
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-11-11
On 3rd Dec 1984, over 30,000 people of Bhopal died through cyanide poisoning from the nearby Union Carbide plant. More than 500,000 were seriously injured. Dominique Lapierre's book attempts to provide the inside story on this disaster as well as to provide the point-of-view of those who were most affected, the poor victims. Lapierre attempts to explore the motivations and actions of all parties involved including Union Carbide's management, the victims, the Indian government and the Americans. Actually, this book is a tribute to all those victims who have not received justice in spite of many tall claims that they would. Having read "City of Joy" which made me cringe when I read about the open sewers of Calcutta slums, Lapierre's work on Bhopal makes me feel that this author is a true friend of the downtrodden.
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Why did it happen: GREED!
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-12-17
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster, Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro - The gas leak in Bhopal in the winter of 1984 claimed 3,787 lives. That's the official count; unofficial estimates range from 20,000 dead and half a million suffering from the after-effects of inhaling a noxious gas. Why did the tragedy happen? Simple: greed. Union Carbide, in a zeal to supply more pesticide than could be used in the subcontinent, built a plant to produce the pesticide locally. When the Indian droughts and distribution problems conspired to reduce their revenues, UC did what any western corporation does with pride: reduce costs. In this case, costs were reduced by allowing the safety systems of the plant to atrophy. The air-conditioner which should have maintained a regulating temprature was shut down; the flare which would normally have burned off the excess gas was extinguished; the pipes which would have shunted the execss gas to other tanks were left to rust; the employees who should be monitoring the saftey functions of the plant were let go. After all, UC thought, a plant that was not producing any pesticide could not turn into an environment disaster. They were wrong.
Due to a series of unfortunate occurences, gas pressure built up in the tanks causing it to escape, with deadly results. Since UC had not seen fit to provide information on the composition of the gas (Methyl isocynate, or MIC) to the local government, no effective antidote could be used by the hospitals when affected people started to arrive. By the morning of December 3, 1984, thousands were dead.
The name Bhopal is synonymous with the disaster that occurred there 20 years ago. To this date, no criminal proceedings have been held to hold UC responsible (UC was bought out by Dow Chemicals in 2000, and no longer exists as an independent company; Dow absolves all responsibility of the disaster). UC settled with the Indian government on a sum of US $470 million. After 20 years, about US $300 million are still with the Indian government awaiting disbursements to people who are no longer alive, or even if they are alive, are dying a slow and painful death. The Indian government, maybe out of inertia, or maybe out of the mistaken belief that future multi-nationals may not invest in India if UC is charged with criminal neglect, has not done anything to prosecute UC. UC, for its part, blames the accident on a disgruntled employee! The CEO of UC, Warren Anderson, lives in anonymity in the US; he is a wanted person in India. Thousands of lives have been lost and millions affected, all brushed aside by a UC statement that distills these enormous losses to a "per share loss of 0.43 cents!"
This is a great book, written in the same style that Dominique Lapierre uses for "Freedom At Midnight". 2/3 of the book is devoted to glimpses in the lives of the people who were the hardest hit by the gas leak; the remaining 1/3 is devoted to the actual leak. This book should be a must read for all multi-nationals that espouse to exploit the cheap third world labor market. It is a telling fact that when smaller amounts of gas leaks in UC plants occurred in the US, one of the affected women went to college to get a degree in environment issues and armed with it, battled UC in the courts (and prevailed). The affected people in Bhopal did not have such a chance, nor can they even comprehend this as a way of battling corporations. India has a long way to go before it considers itself a first world country. For more information, see Union Carbide's official site on the Bhopal Disaster (http://www.bhopal.com), and a non- government organization site (http://www.bhopal.org), which to me is far more believable than UC's site.
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A FASCINATING READ
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-07-15
0 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
A great and interesting read .. Beautiful coverage and master story telling
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Marginal prose reveals powerful, enraging story
Rating  (3)
Date: 2004-06-14
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
When a cruise missile destroys a target, there is a certain level of responsibility on Raytheon, the manufacturer. That type of corporate complicity though, is subservient to the lion's share of the blame which would go to the government that uses the cruise missile. In the case of Union Carbide, no such opportunities to share the blame exist. The deaths of up to 30,000 people lie directly at the door of the company as has been made clear in several books, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal being the most recent. It is unfortunate that the massacre perpetrated in Bhopal is given only a marginal telling here. The story is fairly compelling and it does have a creeping sense of doom as ones reads it. Often times though, the authors drop into cliché and melodrama. Many of the people in the book are revealed as one-dimensional, polarizing the guilty and innocent. If the victims of the crime were thugs of some sort, their characters should remain irrelevant. The same should go for those who are largely decent people, painting them as angelic does nothing to further the quest for justice against Union Carbide (since absorbed by Rhône-Poulenc and Dow Chemical). It's merely an attempt to tug at the heartstrings of the reader, of whom only the most imbecilic or callous would fail to identify with the victim and convict the perpetrator. That is not to say that the authors should not have tried to give the victims names and personalities, only that the way it is done here is often times unbearable. When it does come through though, it's effective. Drawing a depth of character that allows the reader to focus on what exactly the cost is going to be to these people, one can feel a bit of personal loss with the victims. The other main flaw that comes to mind is one that might have been identified by one of the blurbs on the back cover. In the book A Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger gives thoughts, actions and motives (even dialogue) to people after all communication from them had been cut off. This was done despite the fact there is absolutely zero reason to think that any of it happened or that the characters were even alive at that point. Passing such tripe off as nonfiction is repulsive. When there is some evidence that might help recreate the last moments of people, as in Bhopal where the bodies of the killed were available at the time, there can be a limited amount of reasonable supposition. In the case of Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, this reviewer thinks the authors stretched a bit beyond reasonable credulity. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, the authors have recounted a piece of history and found to put the blame where most others have as well. Perhaps the melodrama and angel-raising could have been cut a bit to provide a better glimpse about the struggle for justice in the time since the mass-killing but that decision belongs to the authors, not to me. Reliable estimates put the total number of fatalities from the gassing of Bhopal higher than the number of Kurds gassed at Halabja by Saddam Hussein in one of his more famous crimes. The mens rea is clear for both crimes, one through direct malice, and one through reckless behavior that reasonable people could expect to lead to death. This is well established using Union Carbide's own materials. The safety reports convict the company on their own yet, justice is conspicuously absent to the people of Bhopal, with the complicity of the American government and the offensive lack or personal responsibility on the part of the Warren Anderson and the others chiefs of Union Carbide. Five Past Midnight in Bhopal gives a good account of the events and the behavior that lead up to the worst industrial catastrophe in history, it unfortunately does so with marginal storytelling ability and prose.
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So We Never Forget
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-03-03
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
Rarely I start a book and can not put it down until the very last page. Being a avid reader of various topics for many years, Five Past Midnight at Bhopal was one such book, that made me stay till two in the morning, unable to put it down.
I faintly remember the incident at Bhopal, having been fairly young at the time to take in all the details, or appreciate the human tragedy that has occured, so I did not hesitate to buy this book as soon as it was published, being previously unfamilair with the works of Lapierre and Moro.
What makes this book so powerful is its unflinching humanity. Some of the thousands of victims that died that night, suddenly were alive with a history, and the authors with obvious sympathy, transform wretched, destitute, outcast people into heroes..their lives, joys, aspirations, optimism in the face of impossible odds is a wonderful triumph of the human spirit, regardless of how many gods it worships.
The moment when one of these people gets the first TV set, to the amazement of all the slum dwellers, is very touching and powerful..When the wedding preparations are made, and the joy of the parents borrowing money from a usurer to make it the most beautiful day of their daughter's life, is full of dignity..In short, the authors succeed on one level, to pay hommage to people that are forgotten in their own country and certainly in the world.
Yet the whole book is about the tragedy of the factory, and although I believe that the incident was partly caused by the cost cutting of Union Carbide,partly because of the inefficiency, and lack of training of the employees..(I did not join the authors in their apparent anti globalization undertones), the effect and devastation was mind boggling.
Yet why this book works beautifully, is simply because the authors have presented us with the lives of many characters, and when the tragedy strikes, we care enough about these people to turn every page in anticipation to know their fate.
It also reads like a thriller, escalating tension up until the fateful moment..
I did not finish the book accusing anyone, it is a tragic accident, rather I had a great feeling about how great the human spirit can be, the notion of selfless sacrifice coming alive.
If anything, I think the proceeds of this book will help some of the victims, which will make it an essential buy.
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