Hiroshima

Author:  John Hersey

Hersey's visit to Hiroshima as the effects of the atomic bomb dropped there were just coming to be realized, yields the accounts of a half-dozen survivors of the blast. Hersey's interlaced retelling of their experiences is free of pathos and vilification, and all the more powerful because of that. Reading this treasure of a book, I was astonished to discover how naively I have accepted the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as historical facts and how very superficial were my understanding and even concern for their human realities.

Read May 2006.