John Hersey – författare

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author John Hersey's seminal work of narrative nonfiction which has defined the way we think about nuclear warfare.  “One of the great classics of the war" (The New Republic) that tells what happened in Hiroshima during World War II through the memories of the survivors of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city."The perspective [Hiroshima] offers from the bomb’s actual victims is the mandatory counterpart to any Oppenheimer viewing." —GQ Magazine “Nothing can be said about this book that can equal what the book has to say. It speaks for itself, and in an unforgettable way, for humanity.” —The New York Times Hiroshima is the story of six human beings who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. John Hersey tells what these six -- a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest -- were doing at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. Then he follows the course of their lives hour by hour, day by day.The New Yorker of August 31, 1946, devoted all its space to this story. The immediate repercussions were vast: newspapers here and abroad reprinted it; during evening half-hours it was read over the network of the American Broadcasting Company; leading editorials were devoted to it in uncounted newspapers.Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them -- the variety of ways in which they responded to the past and went on with their lives -- is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

John Hersey (1914–93) was a correspondent for Time and Life magazines when in 1942 he was sent to cover Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific. While there, Hersey observed a small battle upon which Into the Valley is based. While the battle itself was not of great significance, Hersey gives insightful details concerning the jungle environment, recounts conversations among the men before, during, and after battle, and describes how the wounded were evacuated as well as other works of daily heroism.

When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 100,000 men, women and children, it was the beginning of a terrifying new episode in human history. Written only a year after the disaster, John Hersey brought the event vividly alive with this heart-rending account of six men and women who survived despite all the odds. He added a further chapter when, forty years later, he returned to Hiroshima to discover how the same six people had struggled to cope with catastrophe and with often crippling disease. The result is a devastating picture of the long-term effects of one very small bomb.

The explosion over Hiroshima of the first nuclear bomb reduced, in an instant, an entire city to rubble and killed over 100,000 men, women and children. It also announced a new era in human history: the Atomic Age. Written only a year after the event, John Hersey's Hiroshima was an immediate phenomenon. Originally published in the New Yorker magazine - the only single article to ever fill an entire edition - it quickly became a bestseller and established itself as the definitive account of the bombing. Hersey's lucid prose and focus on eye-witness experience made plain the horror of nuclear weapons, clearly demonstrating the incredible danger this new technology posed to humanity. This edition includes an additional chapter, written forty after Hiroshima was first published, exploring the devastating long-term effects of the bomb on survivors, as well as how a city can begin to rebuild after such a catastrophe.

From the bestselling author of Hiroshima, a searing account of police brutality, white racism, and black rage in 1960s Detroit.On the evening of July 25, 1967, on the third night of the 12th Street Riot, Detroit police raided the Algiers Motel. Acting on a report of gunfire, officers rounded up the occupants of the motel's annex—several black men and two white women—and proceeded to beat them and repeatedly threaten to kill them. By the end of the night, three of the men were dead. Three police officers and a private security guard were tried for their deaths; none were convicted. In The Algiers Motel Incident, first published in 1968, Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Hersey strings together interviews, police reports, court testimony, and news stories to recount the terrible events of that night. The result is chaotic and sometimes confusing; facts remain elusive. But, Hersey concludes, the truth is clear: three young black men were murdered "for being, all in all, black young men and part of the black rage of the time."With a new foreword by award-winning author Danielle L. McGuire, The Algiers Motel Incident is a powerful indictment of racism and the US justice system.