Hiroshima (book)
First edition
|
|
| Author | John Hersey |
|---|---|
| Country | Japan |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. |
|
Publication date
|
1946 |
| Pages | 160 pp |
| OCLC | 680840 |
| 940.54/25 19 | |
| LC Class | D767.25.H6 H4 1989 |
| Preceded by | A Bell for Adano (1944) |
| Followed by | The Wall (1950) |
Hiroshima is a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey. It tells the stories of six survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, covering a period of time immediately prior to and one year after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945. It was originally published in The New Yorker. Although the story was originally scheduled to be published over four issues, the entire edition of August 31, 1946 was dedicated to the article. The article and subsequent book are regarded as one of the earliest examples of the New Journalism, in which the story-telling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reporting.
Less than two months after the publication of Hiroshima in The New Yorker, the article was printed as a book by Alfred A. Knopf and has sold over three million copies to date.Hiroshima has been continuously in print since its publication, according to later New Yorker essayist Roger Angell, because “[i]ts story became a part of our ceaseless thinking about world wars and nuclear holocaust”.
Before writing Hiroshima, Hersey had been a war correspondent in the field, writing for Life magazine and The New Yorker. He followed troops during the invasion of both Italy and Sicily during World War II. In 1944, Hersey began working in the Pacific Theater and followed Lt. John F. Kennedy through the Solomon Islands. Hersey was one of the first Western journalists to view the ruins of Hiroshima after the bombing. Hersey was commissioned by William Shawn of The New Yorker to write a series of articles about the effects of a nuclear explosion by utilizing witness accounts as this subject had been virtually untouched by journalists. Hersey had originally interviewed many more witnesses, but he focuses his article on only six of the witnesses.
The issue of August 31, 1946, arrived in subscribers' mailboxes bearing a light-hearted cover of a summer picnic in a park. There was no hint what was inside. Hersey's article began where the magazine's regular "Talk of the Town" column usually began, immediately after the theater listings. At the bottom of the page, the editors appended a short note: "TO OUR READERS. The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use. The Editors." One of the few people other than the principal editors of The New Yorker tipped to the forthcoming publication was the magazine's principal writer E. B. White, to whom Harold Ross confided his plans. "Hersey has written thirty thousand words on the bombing of Hiroshima (which I can now pronounce in a new and fancy way)", Ross wrote to White in Maine, "one hell of a story, and we are wondering what to do about it.... [William Shawn, managing editor of The New Yorker] wants to wake people up, and says we are the people with a chance to do it, and probably the only people that will do it, if it is done."
...
Wikipedia