Hiroshima
John Hersey
What an exceptionally sparse, yet moving book. Hersey went to Hiroshima a year after the devastating nuclear bomb strike of August 1945 and interviewed several victims of the blast, producing this shocking and matter-of-fact account of the strike and its immediate aftermath, giving modern readers and contemporary readers alike an intricate picture of the havoc wreaked by this inhuman monster of modern warfare. Hersey succeeds mostly because he does not sentimentalize the victims or their plights: his prose is straightforward and journalistic. Hersey knows to sit back and let the events unfold in the reader's imagination, and his restraint makes the book effective despite its dry, jounalistic tone. Throughout the small book there are hints of interweaving stories but these threads are never forced and are left to unfold as they will and, despite the book's focus on six individuals, those people are well-connected and provide a seemingly comprehensive glimpse into the horrors of the world's entrance into the new nuclear era.
Hersey wisely begins without much backstory or elaborate set-ups. He simply presents his six main characters as they were precisely when the bomb was dropped, a stark shift from everyday life to the depths of psychological horrors beyond the normal imagination. Hersey does an excellent job of capturing the frantic sense of confusion in his rapid shifts between the interviewees and their situations; though this makes the narrative confusing for the reader, the narrative is effective because each story is sufficiently individual and social to fit within the greater scope of the work. Hersey traces the victims through the immediate aftermath and then swings wide to look at the months after the bombing; this transition is a bit awkward and inconsistent between the individual stories but nonetheless offers appropriate senses of both closure and enduring effects. Hiroshima may not be a particularly exciting or sentimental story of a nuclear bomb strike, but it is a deeply moving piece of journalism that should be read by any and all even considering the potential benefits and hazards of using nuclear weapons. Despite its focus on a culture entirely removed from our own, it is not hard for modern readers to find their own colleagues and family members among Hersey's starkly rendered characters: Hiroshima is a testament to the horrible power of human imagination and, without falling victim to overarching pronouncements on human nature, retains a power in and of itself to comment on the human condition. This book is an exercise in minimalism entirely appropriate to its subject and is thus entirely successful.
Grade: A
John Hersey
What an exceptionally sparse, yet moving book. Hersey went to Hiroshima a year after the devastating nuclear bomb strike of August 1945 and interviewed several victims of the blast, producing this shocking and matter-of-fact account of the strike and its immediate aftermath, giving modern readers and contemporary readers alike an intricate picture of the havoc wreaked by this inhuman monster of modern warfare. Hersey succeeds mostly because he does not sentimentalize the victims or their plights: his prose is straightforward and journalistic. Hersey knows to sit back and let the events unfold in the reader's imagination, and his restraint makes the book effective despite its dry, jounalistic tone. Throughout the small book there are hints of interweaving stories but these threads are never forced and are left to unfold as they will and, despite the book's focus on six individuals, those people are well-connected and provide a seemingly comprehensive glimpse into the horrors of the world's entrance into the new nuclear era.
Hersey wisely begins without much backstory or elaborate set-ups. He simply presents his six main characters as they were precisely when the bomb was dropped, a stark shift from everyday life to the depths of psychological horrors beyond the normal imagination. Hersey does an excellent job of capturing the frantic sense of confusion in his rapid shifts between the interviewees and their situations; though this makes the narrative confusing for the reader, the narrative is effective because each story is sufficiently individual and social to fit within the greater scope of the work. Hersey traces the victims through the immediate aftermath and then swings wide to look at the months after the bombing; this transition is a bit awkward and inconsistent between the individual stories but nonetheless offers appropriate senses of both closure and enduring effects. Hiroshima may not be a particularly exciting or sentimental story of a nuclear bomb strike, but it is a deeply moving piece of journalism that should be read by any and all even considering the potential benefits and hazards of using nuclear weapons. Despite its focus on a culture entirely removed from our own, it is not hard for modern readers to find their own colleagues and family members among Hersey's starkly rendered characters: Hiroshima is a testament to the horrible power of human imagination and, without falling victim to overarching pronouncements on human nature, retains a power in and of itself to comment on the human condition. This book is an exercise in minimalism entirely appropriate to its subject and is thus entirely successful.
Grade: A
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