Hiroshima

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Summary: Eyewitnesses to the bomb
Review: This slender volume is to Hiroshima what "Night" is to the Holocaust. It doesn't explain how the bomb was made, or why it was dropped. Rather, Mr. Hersey writes about Hiroshima from the perspective of survivors, who are fairly average people. The experiences he describe are uniquely personal and, deliberately, I think, related matter-of-factly. The stories told here remind us why we should always think differently about weapons of mass destruction.

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Summary: Hiroshima had a good message, but it was hard to understand
Review: The book Hiroshima was not what it seemed to be to me. I thought it would have a lot more depth to it and the six people that John Hersey interviewed were usually just being normal and didn't really show real deep emotion toward the tragedy that has happened in this book. The people in the book were interesting to read about but they were just too plain. If there was a country's president or someone really important, not to say that they weren't important because that is a great gift to be saved from dying in an explosion that had an impact on the whole world. If you choose to read this book, try to look at it as if you were one of those people so then you can get into the book a lot more than what I did. I did do that in the first and fifth chapters so I understood it much more than what I did in the chapters in between. I would like to recommend this book to those people that are into real climax stories and role-playing stories. I also recommend this book to those of you that choose a tragedy over a comedy or suspenseful novel.

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Summary: Read this book
Review: I started off reading this book for English class and then I finished it for my own sake. Although everyone has different opinions on the bombing its nice to know how everyone feels. The characters made this book so much better than any others I've read. You should read it so you can review history.

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Summary: not good book at all don't read it if you are unpatient
Review: It was boring the subject should be more passinated writen than John Hersey did

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Summary: Great book for people above 12:):)
Review: This book was really good, I was quite hard to read, but I ended up understanding it the second time. I tought the six people were hard to understand, because they were all jumbled up, and not in order. I read the book as an assignment for L.A. I f you want to read a gory, confusing, just plAin weird book , well, this is the one!!!

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Summary: Flavorless writing...
Review: We just had to read this story for my freshman english calss. I was of course pleased with how we didn't have to read some tale jumbled with so much symbolisim that we could barely remember the main charactor, but this was definately on the other end of the spectrum. I feel that this book was poorly written. The Atom Bomb is such a delicate subject, and it did not deserve the flavorless writing which was John Hersey's style. I often found myself bored because The words in the book were simply words, not passionate writing which I expected. I did give it two stars, because now I understood what the people of Hiroshima were going through, but the style of writing which was simply fact, left me bored.

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Summary: A stomach turning book (in a good way)
Review: I am a 14 year old from Boulder, Colorado so please excuse any spelling or punctuation mistakes. I am also a starting out WWII buff This book taught me on the horror of the bombing. I almost made a trip to the bathroom quite a few times. It also taught me of the events of the day.It was gripping and I coulden't put it down. I would recomend it to people who are 12 years old and up.I realy enjoyed reading it.

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Summary: A must read for anyone interested in the Hiroshima disaster
Review: What we covered in History class just didn't cut it... We were able to cover why events happened and how they developed; however only this book has given me the TRUTH on how it affected Japan's citizens and later on, how it affected the hibokusha. If you haven't read it yet, its time to.

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Summary: Individual Horror Rather Than Nameless Horror
Review: This is an excellent study of six survivors of the nuclear holocaust at Hiroshima. The author follows the lives of six people from what they were doing that morning before the bomb exploded through their immediate reactions and the following year. In the final chapter, he offers a view into their lives forty years later. It portrays the horror of the event from individual's eyes rather than the massive horror of nameless victims. It should be recommended reading for high school history classes.

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Summary: It brings a greater meaning to the words "pain and loss".
Review: John Hersey's Hiroshima is one of the better books I have read about the atomic bomb that brought an end to World War II. His personal account of the six hibakusha took the devastation and destruction the bomb brought to a more significant level. The stories of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Dr. Sasaki, Father Kleinsorge, and Reverend Tanimoto touched my heart---as well as many others I know. The vivid details he used made me realize that when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, we dropped pain and disaster on the hundreds of thousands of people living there. The last chapter, "The Aftermath," really brought home the effects of the bombing, because even after 40 years many Japanese were still suffering from radiation sickness and other diseases. It was definitely a long, hard road to recovery these people had to travel. No matter what the history books say or what Hersey has presented in his novel, though, the bombing can be summed up with one phrase: "Shikata ga-nai---it can't be helped."