riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/12/84)
"Hiroshima" by John Hersey. (New York: Knopf, 1946; presumably still in print.)
This is a small but very powerful book, written for the pages of the "New
Yorker" just a year after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By
dwelling on specifics and the personal experiences of perhaps a dozen rather
diverse survivors of the attack, Hersey makes us comprehend its human
consequences much more readily than any abstract, statistic-laden account ever
could. He also avoids going into the pro-con arguments about whether or not
the bomb should have been used, except to mention them briefly as they were
viewed by the Japanese themselves. Nevertheless, the compassion with which he
sketches the suffering endured by the people of Hiroshima makes it clear that,
justified or not, necessary or not, the event was one of the most horrendous
possible. I was surprised to discover that a book like this was written by an
American so soon after the end of the war, and even more surprised to discover
how well it has held up in the nearly forty years since then.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle