A review by maketeaa
Hiroshima by John Hersey

challenging dark informative sad slow-paced

5.0

five stars because of what this work is. there is something so powerful about a 30,000-word piece on an american atrocity published through an entire issue of the new york times. especially when that piece is the kind of piece that hersey has created -- something personal, real, vivid, taking an audience who had been hearing about the glory of the atom bomb into the core of that glory, into the lives desecrated in a way that's worse than a horror movie. it gave me chills imagining being one of those american readers, reading about the impact of the bomb in such a frighteningly human way. you hear a lot of hiroshima nowadays, but it's sometimes hard to fathom what living through it must have been like. this is the exact account to put oneself in that nightmare -- the flash of white light had just been the beginning.