John Hersey’s Hiroshima is one of the finest pieces of journalism of the twentieth century. Before this article ran in the New Yorker, Americans knew some dry facts and figures about the bombing of Hiroshima. But Hersey’s novelistic approach made the bombing less abstract. By following the fate of six people, he gave all the victims a human face. This book is probably the first fully articulated “no-nukes” protest work, although it is presented as pure reportage (and it is) and never presents a lesson. But the fundamental decency and honesty of his reporting could not fail to convey a corrective message about the horrors of nuclear weapons.
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