Robert Moore: A Time to Die: The Kursk Disaster

By MARGIE THOMSON

Be prepared for a mounting feeling of horror as you read this nevertheless riveting account of the loss of the Russian submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea in August 2000, and of all 118 crew. You'll remember from the news reports that there were two large and, at the time, unexplained, explosions that sent the Kursk plummeting to the ocean floor. Many of the crew were killed outright; others survived the initial blasts but died most hideously some days later, before rescuers eventually made it down to the sub.

Robert Moore is a former Moscow Correspondent of ITN and now its foreign affairs editor, and his research and presentation experience saturate this story. He provides exhaustive background, having talked to the families of the crew, Russian officials, international rescue teams, the US submarine crews monitoring the Kursk's movements, and a historical perspective on the political, social and environmental issues raised by the disaster.

More than this, though, he humanises the sailors and their families and contextualises their lives in the bleak base town and aboard the submarines; their patriotism but also their frustration with their own corrupt military bureaucracy - a bureaucracy that was, ironically, to contribute to their deaths. Vivid horror it may be, but this isn't a book to turn away from, and it is satisfying to have answered all the questions that one wondered about during those tense days before the belated rescuers opened the hatches of the doomed sub.

Doubleday

$37.95