Rating: 
Summary: Influential!!! you should read...
Review: This book is very emotional, saddening and agonizing book about one of the worst chapeters in our history. This book opened my eyes to the hings that went on in Hiroshima at the time of atomic bombing. "hiroshima" tells the lives of six men and women who survived from A-bomb and concludes how the people were affected and how devastating the bombing was.
If I did not read this book I would still see the A-bomb on hiroshima as just a terrible thing happened and would still only see it through the pictures in our history textbook. Everyone should read this book whether they are interested in the subject or not, for this is a book that will open our eyes to the power of human being to kill and destroy everything around us...Hiroshima is one of the most influencial book that i have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Influential!!!
Review: This book is very emotional, saddening and agonizing book about one of the worst chapters in our history. This book opened my eyes to the things that went on in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing. How the people were affected and how devastating the bombing was. The book describes not only the people's actions, but also their emotions. If i did not read this book, i would still see the A-bombing on Hiroshima as just a terrible thing that happened and would still only see through the pictures in our history textbook. Everyone should read this book whether they are interested in the A-bomb or not, because this book will open your eyes to the power of human beings to kill and destroy everything around us. Hiroshima is one of the most influential book that I have ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: I Understand You Teenagers!
Review: I am in a 11th grade Honors English Class in a tiny town in Washington State. I only have a few things to say. First, My teacher is making my classmates and I write a 15 page report to someone who has been in a deep freeze all throught the 1940's and 50's and we have to read Hiroshima and talk about it. I thought the book was not the best. I know you are all thinking that I am only a child and I don't understand Literature. But this reading is not as imformative as it should be. I still recommend it to all readers.
--Edith 17 yrs old.
Rating:
Summary: A Touching Portrait of Ground-Zero
Review: Hersey gives the reader a quick tour through the atomic hell that befell Hiroshima in first-person narrative. In style, the book is lot like quality, frontline journalism. You won't be dissapointed. That said, if you are for a more comprehensive view of the blast and its surrounding history, look somewhere else. Two thumbs up.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to follow, but vivid and descriptive
Review: John Hersey's book Hiroshima is a good account of the horrible crime against humanity that took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. I say good because through the first chapter, the author throws a barrage of six or seven charachters at us and we have to wallow through their separate experiences when the bomb was dropped. After this piecemeal introduction, the book becomes a startlingly great story of the death and destruction of the A-bomb. The book also includes the recollections of a couple of children, which I think are especially powerful in their simplicity. The book takes a while to get going, but draws to a stark and thought-provoking ending.
Rating: 
Summary: A Rather Detached Account of A Horrible Event
Review: This story retraces the steps of six of the survivors of the blast from the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Japan on August 6, 1945, which claimed over one hundred thousand lives. The details described by the six were similar in many regards: the frequency of the sirens signaling U.S. air raids in the days preceding the bombs; the silence accompanying the flash of white light when the bomb hit; the people lying broken and dying in the parks and streets of the city; the fires blazing in every neighborhood. The horror that accompanied the attack and its aftermath is recounted vividly. The hospitals couldn't initially handle the throngs of wounded that flocked there, and only the absolute sickest could be treated with any urgency. People literally melted in the streets. Survivors contracted radiation sickness from the bomb's fallout that lasted for years, oftentimes leading to cancers. Prejudice predominated against survivors of the blast (who were called "hibakusha," or "explosion-affected persons", and whose average life expectancy was 62), who found themselves without government aid and as objects of discrimination by employers. I learned a lot about an event that is described quickly in most history textbooks, in addition to the above-mentioned details. For instance, the book describes a surprising indifference within Japan to the ethics of dropping this weapon of mass destruction. However, the overall tone of the book shares that indifference. Things were described clinically, which tended to belie their magnitude, and the third person omniscient narration didn't convey the panic which the survivors must have felt. The character development was pretty lousy, too, and I would have traded the six shoddily-developed characters for a single well-developed one. As an important aside, it is hard to avoid drawing parallels between the WWII climate and the current post-September 11th war we are currently engaged in. Despite being horrified to read about the details of the atomic bomb fallout, I strongly feel that use of these weapons of mass destruction may be warranted against nations such as Iran and Iraq. I realize this is serious language, but the magnitude of Hiroshima as a deterrent cannot be underestimated in terms of the protection it offered Americans (including the soldiers that did not have to risk their lives in battle). For someone who believes in protecting us the citizens of this nation at any costs, it is a very realistic option that shouldn't be taken lightly, but should not be ignored or followed by the word "never."
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Summary: Journalism with purpose.
Review: First, let me tell you what this book is not. It is not propoganda, it is not a racy novel, and it is not a debate about the rights and wrongs of war. This is journalism pure and simple. Written only a year after the events took place, Hiroshima provides a discription of what the citizens of Hiroshima went through for a public that was trying to understand exactly what Atomic Warfare was, and how it would change the face of world politics. But this is not a polical story, but rather an intensely personal one. Following the lives of "survivors," it chronicals their ordeal in great detail. The book offers no opinion of the morals of war, Atomic bombs, and the like. One reviewer described it as "revisionist," but how could it be, coming so shortly after the fact. Several said it was "boring," but then again they miss the point. This is not Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, it is real life. Anyone who cannot empathize with the suffering of those described in the book has yet to understand the meaning of humanity. That anyone can read this book and not be touched by it, is sadder than the story itself. Finally, the book is short and easy to read. A good introduction to Nuclear warfare.
Rating:
Summary: Great Choice
Review: After reading John Hersey's Hiroshima the only thing I could say was WOW! and nothing else. It was possibily one of the greatest book I'd ever read I call this a good choice
Rating:
Summary: A compelling reading experience still relevant
Review: One of the most remarkable things about John Hersey's Hiroshima is when it was published, within a year after the bomb was dropped. It is easy to admit our faults, it is easy to show our mistakes--if faults and mistakes they were--many years after the fact. But to face the horrendous, factual reporting of the effect of the atom bomb on the citizens of Hiroshima so soon after the fact, is in itself remarkable, and a tribute to not only the New Yorker, which published Hersey's account, but to the strength and open mindedness of the American people in their willingness to assume responsibility for what we had done. It is the opinion of many people, myself included, that World War II was America's finest hour because we faced an enemy in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan that had to be defeated, and we defeated them. But it is also the opinion of many people that we did something so monstrous and so unnecessary by being the first (and still the only) people to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations, that it is hard to find justification, redemption or peace of mind. Could Hiroshima have been avoided? The second most remarkable thing about John Hersey's Hiroshima is the utter lack of editorializing, the complete absence of any sort of political statement, the sheer avoidance of the maudlin and any kind of deliberate jerking of tears in the text. Hersey lets the reportage speak for itself. The elegant flat tonal quality of his report serves all the better to let us see exactly the human consequences of Truman's monumental decision. The terse, evocative quality of the titles of the four parts of the book, "A Noiseless Flash," "The Fire," "Details Are Being Investigated," and "Panic Grass and Fever Few" tell in skeleton form the entire story, and suggest, ever so subtly, the appalling suffering and loss that the people of that Japanese city experienced. Hersey began with the moment--"The Noiseless Flash"--when the bomb dropped, and ended with the naturalistic aftermath as he described how in "Panic Grass and Fever Few" the grasses grew back and green velvet covered much of the ground under the blast. This follows the ironic bureaucratic response suggested in "Details Are Being Investigated." Yes, let's investigate the details, for all the good that will do. Let's also second guess Truman's decision, for all the good that will do. Fifty-five years have now passed. A long time. And still there remains the question: did we do the right thing? Social critic Paul Fussell wrote some years after Hersey's report an essay entitled, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" in which he argued persuasively that the United States really had no choice, and indeed Truman's decision was the only one he could make. The main point being that to take the island of Japan with conventional forces would have cost the US a million casualties. It was strongly believed that the Japanese would fanatically defend their homeland, even with sticks and stones if necessary. A secondary argument concerned the position of the Soviet Union. During the time it would take to ensure surrender by conventional forces, the Soviet Union would probably become involved, and Japan might have become a divided country as is Korea today and as was Germany not too long ago. In the final analysis, this argument goes, at least hundreds of thousands of lives were saved and the Japanese themselves benefitted from being the vanquished of the US alone, allowing us to help them to a speedy recovery. There are other arguments about demonstrating the bomb on a coral island, and the counter argument that there were only two bombs, and that at any rate our resolve to use the bomb would not be proven by such a demonstration, etc. I used to teach Hersey's Hiroshima to high school students, and I would include Fussell's easy as a counterpoint. My feeling has always been that Truman did indeed do exactly what he had to do. Whether that was the right thing to do is another matter. Curious. I don't think Truman could have acted otherwise, but I am not so sure it was the right thing to do. Such is the nature of our ability to know and live the truth. Hersey's insistence on focusing on the everyday people of Hiroshima--on Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk at the East Asia Tin Works, who had just turned her head to talk to another girl, on the Rev. Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who was two miles from the center of the explosion, delivering a cart of clothes to a home in the suburbs, and on four others--allowed him to universalize the Japanese experience so that everyone in the world might know that these people could be anybody. Perhaps this is the saving grace, that we know beyond any shadow of a doubt the incalculable human suffering that ensues from the use of nuclear weapons, and so perhaps we will never use them again, us or anyone else. If they had never been used, perhaps the temptation would have been too great, for us, for the Soviet Union, or some other nation, to use them in the hope of gaining some advantage. But seeing the unmitigated horror of their use, we are all forestalled. I say "all." But would Osama Bin Laden, would Saddam Hussein, use such weapons? Hersey's Hiroshima is therefore not just an artifact of history, but a warning still relevant today as well as a most compelling reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: A must Read
Review: After reading this book I was forced to rexamine every thing my governemnts done that I've taken for granted was done from a moral high ground. Was I ever a fool. I might recommend another book, Arabs&Israel for Beginners by Ron David for those to who the truth matters.
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