Michael Van Cise

Hiroshima by John Hersey


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hersey's Hiroshima catalogs the lives of a handful of survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII. The accounts of the aftermath of the bomb seem to be told fairly even-handedly. Hersey likely opposes atomic weapons and probably war itself, but the book doesn't read as overly political or in-your-face as such. His descriptions of both the immediate impact on the city and its people and the lingering effects of radiation on those in the bomb's wake are eye-opening. Hersey presents the topic well.