"One of the premier historians of our time, Dominique Lapierre is the author of such stirring classics as Is Paris Burning? and The City of Joy. Famed for uncovering the humanity in historic events, he here joins forces with acclaimed writer Javier Moro. Together they investigate and chronicle each fateful moment counting down to what happened. ". "Union Carbide was a huge American corporation whose leaders had only the best intentions. In New York they invented a miracle insecticide. In ancient Bhopal, they formulated the lethal gas needed to produce it and built a giant plant to process it. ". "But at five past midnight on December 3, 1984, toxic gas leaked out of a pesticide tank. By one-thirty geysers were spitting poison into the night wind. The apocalypse had begun. Banks of deadly fog filled nearby slums. Lungs burst. Corneas burned. Death would strike in seconds and no one was prepared: neither the bride at her wedding banquet nor the peasants who came to Bhopal for a better life, nor the shoemaker rousing his neighbors to flee their huts nor the Scottish nun risking all to rescue lost children. By night's end, over half a million Bhopalis were drowning in pain and chaos, and between 16,000 and 30,000 would die in the worst industrial disaster in history. "--BOOK JACKET.