Product Description
"At, exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk."When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict.Amazon.com Review
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could haveanticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winningauthor John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortlyafter the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published,giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survivedit. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, FatherKleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to thestatistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelmingpublic response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference inthe war or that it should never have been dropped,"Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in theshadow of armed conflict. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (216)

The horror of the atomic bomb and a wake-up call for the future
Published in The New Yorker in 1946, "Hiroshima" was the result of in-depth personal interviews with six of the victims of the atomic blast that hastened the surrender of the Japanese in WW2.These victims were ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.Then, on a hot August day, there was a bright flash of light and the world they lived in changed forever.It is estimated that 100,000 people were killed in the first blast and, over the next few years, more than another 100,000 died as a result of radiation poisoning.Through up-close and personal interviews, the victims Hersey interviewed became very real people to me and I will never forget their accounts of the dreadfulness they experienced.They included a Japanese Methodist minister who was educated in the United States, a war widow and mother of three young children, a German Jesuit priest, an office clerk and two different doctors.Through their eyes I saw the dead and dying, the horrible burns, the wounds that didn't heal, the destruction of homes and the displacement of families, the lack of medical care and the absolute devastation everywhere.Through this article, the American people became acutely aware of the horrific affects of nuclear weapons.

Forty years later, the author returned to Hiroshima to again interview these same six people. One of the women had become a nun, another woman suffered with radiation sickness for years, one of them tried to erase all memory of the bombing, one had become a prosperous doctor in his own private clinic,one of them suffered from his wounds for the rest of life, and one of them wound up touring the United States to raise money to rebuild his church and help young girls injured in the blast to have reconstructive surgery.And, during all these years, two of these interviewees had died.

The impact this small book had on me went well beyond its 152 pages.I will never forget it andcan't help wondering about what the result will be now that so many countries have nuclear weapons.This book makes it all real.It is both an excellent piece of journalism as well as a wake-up call for the future.

An immensely powerful pathetic argument
John Hersey's slim little volume here is an immensely powerful pathetic argument against the dropping of nuclear weapons in particular and against war in general.He deals with the aftermath of the lifetimes of several survivors of the dropping of the first nuclear weapon on an inhabited place.Many were killed instantly, others were crushed in the debris and rubble, and others weren't as lucky - dying a slow death from burns and radiation.

This is an immensely humanizing work that I wish those in power would read or at least be aware of before they made devastating decisions.We in human race have been lucky enough that we haven't had to write a sequel to this book based on a different war and a different place on the same scale. Sadly, we write little ones every day.

required reading
The book is great.Gives a unique view into Japanese survivors of the A-Bomb.However, this edition for what ever reason, does not include the Aftermath epilogue. I needed that chapter for my class and was very upset this book did not have it.

Most boring book I have ever read
This review may annoy people who feel strongly about the book or the incident, but Hiroshima really is the driest read imaginable. I had to teach it to an extension English class and when the time came to discussing the text, all 24 students owned up to not reading it because it bored them senseless. I couldn't feel angry about that because I too found it so dull that I struggled to get through it. I ended up supplementing it with other non-fiction texts. Three successive classes have all proclaimed it the most "boring" book they have ever been asked to read for English. This review is more for teachers pondering using it as a study text. Don't! Your students will thank you for it.

An intimate look at the innocent victims of total war
Hard not to feel nostalgic for days when war was waged by warriors. A certain civility in that. Rules of engagement. Codes of honor. You think of Greeks, and Samurai, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade;" of French and German soldiers who meet in No Man's Land to share Christmas treats then return to opposing trenches.

But then here comes Nanking, Stalingrad, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Total war, as the phrase goes. A reversion to tribal days, perhaps, when warring foes fell men, women, and children alike, to void vengeance. A weapon now to instill dread, to sap the will, to raise the costs of conflict.

Hiroshima: August 6, 1945, 8:15 a.m. That's when John Hersey`s story begins, with "a noiseless flash." It begins not in the White House, nor in the Imperial Palace or the B-29 that dropped the bomb. But in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, where Toshiko has just turned to speak to a co-worker. In the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, where Dr. Sasaki walks down the corridor, a blood specimen in hand. In the minds of six who survived, at a half dozen points across the city, at the instant the atomic bomb exploded.

Here Hersey does not pontificate, excuse, blame, or rage. He reports. With meticulous detail, in short, clear, declarative sentences, with controlled understatement. To describe a human experience so beyond words and thought that it can be grasped only through the senses.

So, through the eyes and ears of these six hibakusha, literally, "explosion-affected persons," we see the scarred multitudes fleeing the fires, hear the shocked silence of the radiated dying, feel the flames, and smell the putrefying flesh. Working like a novelist, Hersey puts us there, scene upon scene, with dialogue and pertinent detail, to show the reality on a human scale. Not commenting, but showing:

"The hurt ones were quiet; no one wept, much less screamed in pain; no one complained; none of the many who died did so noisily; not even the children cried; very few people even spoke."

And:

"Mr. Tanimoto found about twenty men and women on the sandspit. He drove the boat onto the bank and urged them to get aboard. They did not move and he realized they were too weak to lift themselves. He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glovelike pieces."

Or:

"He saw a uniform. Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with the water. When he had penetrated the bushes he saw there were about twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks."

And:

"She kept the small corpse in her arms for four days, even though it started smelling bad on the second day."

Though a Yale and Cambridge educated journalist, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Hersey uses simple words, simple sentences, and a direct, conversational tone to tell a story that would dwarf any language. He gives the numbers: 6,000 degrees centigrade; 70,000 of 90,000 buildings destroyed; 100,000 killed, another 100,000 hurt in a city of 245,000. But cold facts, Hersey realizes, cannot encompass the horror. Only by reliving the day and its aftermath through the eyes, ears, and words of those who experienced it can we approach it. Simply and hauntingly, Hersey places us at ground zero, with austere language that vibrates with intensity:

"They told her that her mother, father, and baby brother...had all been given up as certainly dead...Her friends then left her to think that piece of news over. Later, some men picked her up by the arms and legs and carried her quite a distance to a truck. For about an hour, the truck moved over a bumpy road, and Miss Sasaki, who had become convinced that she was dulled to pain, discovered that she was not."

A year later, the August 31, 1946 edition of The New Yorker devoted all its space to Hersey's Hiroshima. Newspapers worldwide reprinted it; it was read aloud over radio. Since then it has, for good reason, become a classic of American nonfiction.

In its final chapter, Hersey quotes a Hiroshima priest who had been away from his mission house the morning of the attack:

"It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?"

Some 65 years later, while some still await an answer, Hersey's Hiroshima still breathes a clear reply.
... Read more

Product Description
Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty -- a gripping and visceral story, impossible to put down. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Tragedy of this Scale Deserves the Finest Words to be Remembered
I assigned myself to read aloud from the pages of this book to a couple of friends. I told them it was a really intense book so I just opened a page and started reading

I got to the part where a rounded up Jewish father refused to give up a large duffel bag and inside was a baby with its mouth bound to keep it from making any noise. This father was sneaking the baby into the camp like a goody bag refusing to be parted from it! I managed to finish the page without choking-up but somehow a part of myself had never been the same since.I was just filled with some kind of remorse at having chosen that page at random to read out. It is doubtful that the father or the baby ever made it out and there is some great cost at the back of every instance that shakes us back to our empathizing self.

John Hershey has put into words some of the most tragic accounts of our age. It is not so much the taking of lives as the denial of dignity that made the Nazis so evil. He paints a clear and genuine snapshot of people desperately clinging to the vitals of humanity- their dignity and family.

I would recommend for a follow-up novel Exodus by Leon Uris- just to know that Jews did indeed fight back and win the day. Throw in Inglorious Basterds for higher feel-good effect.

Very good
I have to say, John Hersey is a great writer and this probably one of the best books on the holocaust. The writing style took a little getting used, but gradually, you really feel like you are living behind the ghetto wall. This is probably one of the most realistic accounts of the Warsaw ghetto and the ultimate uprising, as these are very real people living in an extraordinarily bad time, and doing what they can to survive. There are no superheroes here, or the super-perfect and physically stunning flawless characters which inhabit so many books of this type. What is most interesting, and so politically incorrect, is the squabbling that went on between the Jewish groups--rather than unite against a common and deadly enemy, they chose to argue and fight amongst themselves, almost until the end.

I really felt like I knew these people, as they lived, died, married, and survived. The book is based on the actual notes kept by Emanuel Ringlbaum, who is the "real" Noach Levinson, the fictitious narrator and diarist of this book.

But I gave the book 4 stars for 2 reasons. One is that the book dragged on longer than it had to. This is a big book, about 650 pages, but the last 150 could have easily been condensed to less than half that. It is ironic that the most "exciting" part turned out to be the most boring. Towards the end, when the ghetto is being emptied of its last survivors and the Jews are armed and fighting back, the book begins to crawl along slower than a dead garden slug. The entries are repetitious--same thing repeated over and over again. The musings of Noach are dull, and very little happens. The interactions between the characters, and the portraits of their daily lives has vanished, and now they are hiding in bunkers and little more. And this goes on for over 100 pages. I began to skip paragraphs then whole pages at a time, trying to move this along.

At the end, just when about 40 survivors are about to get out, there is a delay, so they are stuck below ground for another 24 hours. Why? The author threw this in so that Noach could do "interviews!" Talk about boring. I skipped those after trying to read through one of them, and then finally, they are out. The survivors, the characters that we have come to know intimately, are now free in the forest and meet up with partisan groups. But then the story ends, abruptly. What the...?

There is no closure, no epilogue, nothing, to tell readers what became of them. It is only May 1943, and there are two very long years of war left. What happens to the characters? Where did they go? What became of those who were living on the Aryan side? What about David--did he ever make it to Palestine? In the prologue, we learn the names of two characters who survived and one who died before the end of the war, but that's it. I can't fathom Hersey's reason for doing this. It was such a letdown, not to have any closure or know what happened, where the characters went, if they survived the war and where they ended up.

How could Hersey do this to himself?
This book was first published when I was a school boy, too young to read it. I remember that it caused quite a sensation, particularly in our local Jewish community. I had all but forgotten it until recently, when I noticed it on the shelf of a used bookstore. I bought it, and began reading it with the expectation that it would be a stimulating experience. I had read two or three other books by Hersey, whom I considered to be an ingenious writer of non-fiction. I had never read any of his novels, however.

What a letdown! Why on earth did Hersey lock himself into the Levinson Archive structure? It makes the book clunky and practically unreadable. I would compare this to putting on a straitjacket before going out to play baseball.

Hersey didn't need the Levinson Archive, with its pseudo-documentary overtones. The archive is fictitious, as Hersey readily admitted. The book should have been written as a straightforward, linear, fictional story. It could have made a damn good one.

Novelists are entitled to take great liberties. They can know everything about the activities of their characters, even everything the characters think. This is almost universally accepted among readers. Nobody would make a fuss if Hersey had written it that way.

I can only guess why Hersey did it his way. Still a young man at the time and a frequent contributor of non-fiction to the New Yorker magazine, with its famously no-nonsense fact checkers, perhaps he felt too intimidated to break out of the mould.

Whatever his motivation, the failed result greatly disappointed this reader.

A Dreadful Bore
I tried to get through this book. It took me about three weeks to get to page one hundred. The format was a mess. It was supposed to be the collected documents of the main character. This format just made reading the book a chore. After a while I found it difficult to keep the characters straight and just found myself dreading the idea of reading it. This could have been a good 400 page novel, but the author tried too hard to be clever and it ruined the impact. I wish I had the patience of the reviewers that finished The Wall because it is about a subject that I am very interested in; but it was just too boring for me to continue.

A Great Book
I read The Wall almost forty years ago, when I was 16 or 17.It has lived with me all those years, and I came to this site in search of a copy to read again.

I noticed a few people compared The Wall to Leon Uris' Mila 18.I read Mila 18 many years ago and it was an exciting read.But the book has not lived with me as The Wall still does.If your satified with excitement, read Mila 18.If you want something more, read The Wall.Which is not to say that The Wall does not have excitement. It certainly does, but it has a lot more.You'll care about the characters, and it through the characters that the story will gain its power. ... Read more

Product Description
The pleasures of a summer's bluefishing off Martha's Vineyard are marvelously evoked as John Hersey reflects upon the angler's art, wonders of the teeming oceans where fish and fisherman confront each other, and the web of interdependence they share. 14 drawings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Gone Fishing with a Neighbor
There are a number of interesting books written by, and about, a prominent group of New York people who lived part of their lives on Martha's Vineyard during the last half of the 20th century. John Hersey was one, as were writer and playwright Lillian Hellman, humorist Art Buchwald, journalist Mike Wallace, among others. Hersey and Hellman (and Buchwald and Wallace), neighbors along the west shore of the little bay called East Chop, are reported to have wandered in and out of one another's kitchens in search of cocktail shakers and such as if the neighborhood was one big commune.

I once walked along the shore drive there to orient myself to the many landmarks encountered over the years in books that were set in or referenced Martha's Vineyard.After reading Blues the same summer I had read Jackson R. Bryer's Conversations with Lillian Hellman I was struck by the notion that the unidentified 'fisherman' in Blues might have been Hellman. In her final years she is reported to have gone fishing near Hersey's dock almost daily in search of bluefish for her evening meal.

Far fetched? So what. To me Blues is less about fishing, chock full as it is of fascinating information about bluefish and the sea rhythms that drive them ever onward, than it is about long-time friends coming to terms with their mutual mortality. Just a few yards seaward of those island retreats churns that never-ending cycle of life from which they had emerged and that ultimately claimed them once again. It would be just like Hersey and Hellman to have sailed out to meet it in a flat-bottomed boat, fishing poles in hand. Blues is an elegant little book.

Item not as advertised
This was a book that was not in the condition as advertised. It had ink marks on the edges of the pages and the pages were trade copy quality instead of tight and smooth. I specifically chose this seller for the description they gave of the condition of the book, as it was for a gift. VERY DISAPPOINTED.

A wee fishing book!
A fisherman takes a stranger out bluefishing along the shore of Massachusetts.On his boat Spray, the fisherman explains to his guest the habits of bluefish, fishing tips, species of native flora and fuana, problems with invasion of non-native species of sea-plants, and chemical pollution. After each fishing trip, they both go back to the fisherman's house where the fisherman's wife prepares a different fish dinner (with recipes included for the reader). Each chapter of this book is followed by a fish-related poem, most of which are too dense for me to enoy.

For people who love fishing, this is a great little book.It offers new insights into a sport we love.The pace of the book is slow, though.For an action-packed adventure, this is not the book to read.However, it does contain a wealth of information.It's the perfect book to leave cozily tucked away for visitors of a beach cottage to find.

Nicely Done, John Hersey
When I picked up this book, I was a guest at a beach house in Edisto Island, SC.I have a habit of reading the criticism quips before reading, and I found one that fit it perfectly.It was something to the effect of "A book you expect to find in a beach house on a rainy August afternoon, binding mildewed by the ocean air, pages bent from frequent readings, and bits of sand between the pages."That described it exactly, only except it wasn't August.As I said, I picked up the book one day and couldn't put it down.At first, the psuedo-dialogue bothered me, but it really grew on me.The whole premise of the book allows for a real education on fishing, naturalism, and the ways of the world.I have not bought the book, but that is soon to change.

Conversational Fishing Novel
Although technically a novel, as it portrays a conversation that did not really happen, John Hersey's Blues feels more like non-fiction because it is one of the most educational books I have read in recent years. I came away from it with a new appreciation for the fisherman--and the fish.

Composed almost entirely of a conversation between two characters referred to only as Fisherman and Stranger, Blues is a portrait of a fisherman passing his knowledge and love of the catching and eating of the bluefish. Hersey's prose is easily conversational and full of information. Scattered throughout are poems from the likes of John Donne and Robert Penn Warren further illustrating the current topic.

Reading its bound-and-printed form, Blues is a bit stilted. I greatly preferred the Recorded Books reading by Norman Dietz, whose craggy voice perfectly suits the seasoned angler, and, when raising it an octave, portrays the excitement of the stranger during his learning experience.

I found myself wanting to go fishing--and wanting to have fish for dinner--while reading about the different methods of how to cook fish in order to get out the ideal flavor--using varying degrees of simple items like butter and mayonnaise. I never thought I would like a book about fish--and I put off reading this for months--but John Hersey's Blues has once again proven that surprises lurk around every corner, if you're willing to keep an open mind and try new things. I may even seek out Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler--the fishing classic--after reading this. ... Read more

Product Description
An Italian-American major in World War II wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700 year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Important Lessons for Today as Well
A Bell for Adano is an important reminder about the depths and enduring stupidity of some Americans' prejudice.This same novel could probably be written today exchanging the Italians and Italian Americans with Latinos and/or Muslims/Arabs.

A good book
Other reviews say a lot about the story, let me just say it is an excellent story. Just read it. You will be pleased you did.
A movie was made based on the book, but it can't, as usual, compare to the book.

"A Clunker Today"

It's 1943, just after the invasion of Sicily by the American army.Major Joppolo is assigned to be the administrative head of the newly-captured town of Adano.He has to face crisis after crisis and deal with all sorts of people--both Italian and American--in order to get things running again.He falls in love with a local girl and incurs the enmity of an arrogant American general.To gather the town's spirit, so much damaged by the war, he tries to get a bell to replace the one melted down by the Fascists.A BELL FOR ADANO is basically a series of vignettes centered around this story, not a tale of personality transformation.The good guys remain good, but bad guys will be bad.
Hersey presents his story in a very naïve style, similar to Saroyan at the same period.It was a morale-boosting effort, self-praising by Americans to tell themselves "this is what we stand for, this is what we are fighting for".It was a moment in history when Americans believed they had something very special to offer the world.The American way, democratic and hardworking, is contrasted to whatever existed in Sicily before.Even if there's army-navy rivalry, if there are bad apples among the Americans, the newly-arrived victors mean well.The American characters are rough and smooth, good and bad, but nothing is very philosophical or psychologically deep.The characters are all pretty thin.Some parts seemed very sappy to me with their "sweet" Italian characters, most of whom came from some stockbook of stereotypes.
Fifteen years after Hersey wrote this novel (which was a great success at the time), "The Ugly American" tried to show a similar thing---that we have a lot to offer the world, but we are our own worst enemies.After another half century---how many invasions more ?--- today we are perhaps a bit wiser, a little more cynical.The American occupation of Sicily is an interesting bit of world history, but our approach to the period has changed over 65 years, and it would be hard to convince most contemporary readers that we are so benign.That's why I would say that this is a book that has not stood the test of time very well.It may have made Americans proud in those days of world war, but I think three stars are more than sufficient today.

funny WWII novel
I read John Hersey's The Child Buyer in college and enjoyed a spirited discussion of it with a professor.Now I remember nothing about it, but I've wanted to read another Hersey novel every since.Written in 1944 about the Allied occupation of a coastal Italian town, the Pulitzer winner A Bell for Adano is surprisingly funny at times.Obviously Hersey is making a patriotic point and a plug for democracy with his American hero Major Victor Joppolo, whose fairness and good will contrast sharply with the corruption of the former Nazi regime. His real nemesis, though, is General Marvin--the type of bad-tempered American whose behavior Joppolo is continually having to apologize for.Joppolo has his hands full as he tries to fulfill basic needs like food and water, but he also wants to restore morale.One of his big tasks in this latter regard is to find a replacement for the town's bell, which was confiscated by the Nazis to be melted down into ammunition.Quirky Italian characters abound, from the head fisherman who refuses to set foot in a government office, to the town crier, who likes to put his own spin on proclamations.I haven't had this much fun reading about the military since I read Joseph Heller's Catch-22, which was a much more challenging read.Unlike Revolutionary Road, I think that this book has held up well over time.

great book I stumbled upon
another 5 star vote for a great book. Found it at a thrift store- for a dollar, started reading it and could not put it down! see if you can. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

True Classic Novel - John Hersey's White Lotus
I first read John Hersey's White Lotus in the early 60's as an undergrad student.I have never forgotten it, and it remains by far one of my favorite books!It's true classic literature and unique.Actually it may be more timely now than ever with the things going on in our world.White Lotus (main character) is an American woman, enslaved by Chinese who have taken over the United States and much of the world.This may have seemed far-fetched when it first came out, but is it that unimaginable in recent years?John Hersey's fantastic skill as a writer makes White Lotus come to life as you read.The reader will be drawn into the story and remember why reading can be more exciting than watching movies when the book is truly good!

White Lotus
I read this book years ago and lost it somewhere along the way.The story has always stayed with me and should be one of the 'Classics'.If I was a literary teacher in high school this is one I'd have my class read, so they could see the 'other side of the coin' since it deals with slavery of the 'white' people.It tells of the injustice that slavery causes for any race of people and I also think it brought me down a notch or two when I was a teenager thinking that just because I was white and had it all that nothing like slavery could happen to me.The story is a real eye-opener and it made me ashamed of what my ancestors did to a proud race of people just because they had different colored skin.Anyway, read the book it's an awesome story.

Why is this book out of print????
A young, blond, white American girl watches as the Chinese army marches into her hometown. Her family is split up and she is taken as a SLAVE! When I first read this book, I must have been 13 or so, and I found it to be utterly terrifying. Most Americans who were born and raised in the US have no clue what it would be like to have tanks and intruders rolling into one's town, taking power, taking Democracy, and forcing us to be COMMUNISTS! The premise of the novel is too good to be true. This book is one of the true underdogs or "sleepers" of the dystopian literature. It's a shame more people haven't read it.

A classic theme
I read White Lotus a long time ago.I don't have our paperback copy any more, but I looked it up on Amazon to be sure I was remembering the title correctly.I was reminded of it while discussing the situation in the middle east with a friend.I didn't realize how long ago I'd read it.It was written in 1965 and you can tell that it made quite an impression on me.As much as George Orwell's 1984.I even remember what the cover of White Lotus looked like.And that the paperback was printed with two different covers, a black one and a red one, to see if the cover color impacted sales.It is a story about peace-activists and how they eventually succeed in a very different setting.Their non-violent protest is eventually successful.

Would a Palestinian approach like that would be successful with Israelis?Would an Israeli approach like that would be successful with Palestinians?

See the reviews of the 19994 edition for more/better info
I don't have our paperback copy of White Lotus any more, a book I read a long time ago, but I looked it up on Amazon to be sure I was remembering the title correctly.I agree with the reviews here, but the reviews for the 1994 version are better and more informative:[...] ... Read more

Product Description
Get your "A" in gear!

They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes™ has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles.SparkNotes'™ motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because:

· They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.
· They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.
· The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.

And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!



... Read more

Product Description
A young American engineer sent to China to inspect the unruly Yangtze River travels up through the river's gorges searching for dam sites. Pulled on a junk hauled by forty-odd trackers, he is carried, too, into the settled, ancient way of life of the people of the Yangtze -- until the interplay of his life with theirs comes to a dramatic climax. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

My cardiologist recomended this book
My cardiologist recommended this book and said that it was his favorite. I enjoyed it and hated to see it end.

Patience
I became an engineer, also.

The ASE and IEEE magazines printed lists of books favored by other engineers--some of my heroes, in fact. The book is written simply, probably appropriate for a junior high school literature class. An adult should devour the book over a short business flight.

Other reviewers, as well as the synopsis here, have explained the story. But I haven't read any that explain how this book relates to engineering. The protagonist is an Engineer, and is culturally distinct from his hosts despite his knowledge of many customs, cuisine, and the language. However, he adversely affects the chi of the boat, subtly disturbing everyone on board.

Further, he is also at odds with thier purpose. He brashly announces his intent to dam the river, intending to simplify and protect their lives with his technology, when he's actually threatening their comfort.

The story is something that all engineers should read--particularly young students--such that they might begin to understand one way that the process of engineering might take shape.

classic; beautiful
An incredibly simple, moving , not-to-ever-be -forgotten gemRead it after a5 day (pre-dam) tripup the Yangtze on recomendation of a travel book. So aposite; it isabout the laborer's life on the river.Like Buck,the simplicity of the language captures the simplicity of the thought process of the peasant.It is also an eduction in thedark, noir,beautiful past of the river.
Martin J Kaplan,Ph.D.

A Single Pebble by Hershey is brilliant.
Hershey has written a small, but very powerful book. It is full of whimsey and cultural contrasts. It entertains such questions as what is true progress. Indeed, it is a great book for group discussions.

A Single Pebble
A single pebble is probably one of the few books in my life that I would read more than once.I like the clash between cultures because it is something we could all relate to if we have traveled to another country. The story is about a young engineer who goes on a journey up the Yangtze River trying to find a good spot to build a dam to make the river safer for boats. The young engineer is faced with many challenges such as the language barrier between himself and the boats crew and the fact that no one else on the boat wants him there because they think he is bad luck. He also starts to think that he is bad luck because on the trip their lead tracker falls into the river to his death, and he blammed the the trackers death on himself. Over all, the book was good with a mix of a little bit of action and some suspence to make you want to keep reading. ... Read more

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seller review
The book came quickly and was in great shape, I would use this seller again.

Essential reading
In 1946, barely a year after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 & 9, 1945, John Hersey wrote an important little booklet about the effects of the bomb upon the lives of six Hiroshima residents who survived the blast.Updated several times over the next 40 years, Hersey follows the lives of these six."Hiroshima" is at once a story of the moments just before and just after the tragic event, the effect of the blast upon the city and its residents, the courage, heroism and sacrifices of the survivors as they struggled to understand what had happened and their heroic rescue of other survivors.In this Hersey succeeds admirably.In the process, "Hiroshima" provides a snapshot of Japanese lifestyle and manners.Much of the story written in the phraseology of the Japanese themselves, Hersey describes a lifetime of recurring medical and psychological problems.Played against the backdrop of initial resentment of Americans for dropping the bomb, Hersey also describes how the Japanese themselves came to understand the responsibility of their own military leaders in starting the war that resulted in the destruction of their city, as well as the role of religion, Japanese as well as Christianity in dealing with the humanitarian issues."Hiroshima" is a cautionary tale of war and of man's inhumanity to man, without attempting to overly blame any single individual or group.Short, to the point, interesting, not easy to read (due to its subject), and not easy to dismiss, this small volume should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding the impact our decisions make on others, and how it effects them for the remainder of their lives.For a specifically detailed and more thorough study of the effects of the atom bomb itself, one would need to find a longer and more modern book.This books value is in its humanity, which is, after all, what the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki teach us.Highly recommended. (Note: This reviewer read the 1989 Vintage Press version. Other reviews are also found under other printings.) ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (5)

A classic!
I loved this book because, along with Guadalcanal Diary, it is one of the only contemporaneous narratives of life on Guadalcanal. I only wish it were 1000 pages. Most war memoirs are seemingly written 30 years on whereas this book has a great sense of immediacy...read it if you love WW2!

Not a good read unless you are an antiwar liberal
This book will disappoint any who are not antiwar liberals.I didn't think this type was around in WW2, but Hersey was. He says he updated it; maybe that was to give it more of that slant.
What you are going to get with this very brief (80 pages!) account is a failure by a Marine company to capture a valley, with emphasis on the wounded and disappointed sied of the conflict, and agnosticism on the moral right of either side.It reads like the liberal press of the Vietnam era or during the present Iraq conflict.
I don't think an author has to sell America the greatest and certainly not the glory of war, but to not recognize the scrifice and the sense of what we were fighting for I think is pretty lousy.Hersey seems to suggest a sense of defending the country at one point ("they fought for home") but then passes over that to say "they were mostly there to avoid the draft" - huh?
For a sharp contrast with just as much emphasis on the frustration and debilitation of combat, get E.B.Sledge's "With The Old Breed at Pelilieu and Okinawa."I read them back to back and the contrast is startling.Wholly different, and in my opinion, much more authentic perspective in Sledge.

War is Hell
That's the bottom-line message of this short, artfully written book by a distinguished writer who served as a war correspondent in the Pacific early in his career.
America had no choice but to fight World War II, and the Marines profiled in this book had to be where they were. But Hersey shows you the war from close up, not from the lofty vantage point of the generals, with their maps, strategic theories and neatly prepared statistical tables.
These are real people being blown to bits. Human lives and humanity itself are expendable in the quest for a few yards of territory.
You will come away from this book hating war, however necessary it may be under certain circumstances.
The same author capped off his message some years later with his classic account of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath. If you haven't read that one, your education isn't complete.

Great for what it is
I was pretty surprised by how short this book was -- not counting illustrations, there are maybe 45-50 pages of content here. That said, it gives a really good perspective on being in battle and how the every-day must have been. It feels a little "cleaned up" and therefore slightly propagandistic (e.g., no one swears, no one is lazy, everyone is helpful to the writer, etc.), but for me at least, that's also helpful in understanding the time and place. The other issue is that you never for a moment forget that this is being written by a journalist (and not by an infantryman) -- the book never pretends to be anything else, though, and the reporter's POV is still useful and in some ways perhaps better for its "objective" third-partyness.

All-in-all, worthwhile for anyone interested in the subject matter.

bkd

Told As It Was
Please do not be put off by fours stars: this is a superb book about early WWII written by someone who 'was there'.The lack of a fifth star merely reflects my desire to have seen a longer, even more in-depth, book.I was born in 1950, so my knowledge of those days is gained mostly by people like John Hersey.Also, my uncle (and namesake) was a member of Edson's Raiders--and he was there, too.I have had the great good fortune to have met many of the Raiders and others on Guadalcanal and I find "Into the Valley" to be most accurate of the descriptions told to me by these veterans.All human, the Marines had to draw on their training and leadership to get themselves through the bitter fighting and to prevail against unsettling odds on Guadalcanal.Hersey allows us to see the Marines as human--young boys and men, for the most part.He paints success and he paints failure with an honest brush.This is a "must read" for anyone interested in WWII and the South Pacific. ... Read more

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The Call is a book of great artistry and gret significance and should become the cheif work of literature on Protestant missions in China, a really magnificent achievement.A triumph for fiction or the historical novel as the way to make history alive. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Fictional account of a missionary in China

This long novel (700 pages) is a fictional biography of a missionary in China. David Treadup is a composite fictional character based on six actual missionaries to China (one of them being Hersey's own father). Told like a real biography and including mainly diary entries, but also comprising excerpts from letters, newspapers, staff minutes, and other biographical tools, Hersey traces the life of his main character from troubled days at Syracuse University (he almost flunks out until given a second chance after which he changes his major to science, which becomes very useful to him in China), to his Call to the ministry after a revival meeting, to his experiences in China. The book is not only an excellent account of Treadup's life in a strange land whose people he comes to love, but also a history of China itself during the first half of the twentieth century. It's easy to get so wrapped up in Treadup's life and experiences that you forget you're reading a novel (it's one of the few novels I've read that has a "Notes" section appended to it). Hersey's use of diary entries makes for an excellent approach: we experience Treadup's personal responses to things more directly and honestly that way. The book is both powerful and inspiring, and is definitely worth checking out.

Long, long story about a China missionary
I love this novel.It's a panorama of life in China as seen by an American missionary from 1906 until the 1950s. The author was the son of a China missionary and most of the events in the book are historical -- althought the main character, Treadup, is fictional -- a composite of sorts for all the missionaries in China. "The Call" achieves a feeling of absolute authenticity.

This is a long exhaustive book.The first hundred pages or so are devoted in Treadup's early life in upstate New York and the reader may be forgiven if he is impatient with the plodding pace.The story picks up when Treadup gets to China as it details his adventures, doubts, and misteps, all worked into the political and social framework of the time.Treadup's journeys -- both physical and spiritual -- are long and arduous and ultimately this is a sad book.

Missionaries are out of fashion these days, but their cause -- the spread of Western civilization -- is still alive.If he lived today, Treadup would not be a missionary, but rather an activist for Tibetan independence, a friend of Bono, a board member of Amnesty International, and a tireless crusader against gender inequality. Will today's secular "missionaries" succeed where Treadup failed?

I don't know of any other novel that probes more deeply and seriously into the life, times, and mind of a China missionary.We live intimately with Treadup and when his life is over, we wonder, as he did, whether it was all worth it.

A 'must read' for China interest
"...Yes, there on the embankment outside the compound I had a smallboy feeling.Chores were over.Only now, aged 65, do I realize how sweetthe chores had always been.Inside the barn, inside the compound wall, Ihad been free -- busy, orderly, useful.Released, I felt at loose ends.Agreat deal had happened to me in Yin Xin camp, and now all I could feel wasa paradox: the loss of the freedom of confinement." p.698

When Ifirst picked up The Call, I fully expected a well-crafted, richhistoriography of China; a novel concentrating on the time period at theturn of the 19th century, through five decades of foreign influence &interaction that finally shaped the terms on which the Communist Revolutionwas founded.What I did not expect, and was pleasantly surprised to find,was the philosophical depth of Hersey's characters; they were vehicles ofan evolution of human thought.Hersey explores both the spiritual and theapplied philanthropy of Christianity.Spiritually, the main characterDavid Treadup was a General of the Lord whose application was saving souls:an idyllic gift between humans.Hersey questioned the application, anduncovered its shallow areas.The dilemma of belief without evidence.Inresponse, the character of Treadup tried to justify Christianity withevidence; he used science lectures as his conveyance.There was terrificinterest on behalf of the Chinese.Treadup felt that by awakening theChinese to the laws of science, he was awakening them the laws of the Lord. His fantastic success with the lectures brought on self-doubt.Hequestioned purpose.Was he a science professor or a missionary?Scienceceased to be an acceptable role for him to wear if that wasn't what he wasabout... there was no connection between his lectures and spiritualredemption.He questioned what he was actually bringing the Chinese,science or religion,... but most importantly he questioned what he wantedto bring.

As the novel develops, Treadup gains experience and insight, heshifts his focus from science lectures to a literary campaign.Withfantastic energy and zeal, he rolls up sleeves and takes on the task ofteaching the peasantry to read and write.All over the countryside he setsup local schools.After the literary campaign Treadup introducesagricultural reform.He continues to answer the noble call, but by servingfunctional needs he is moving further, and further away from addressingspiritual ones.As he was with the science lectures, Treadup is againplagued with doubt.He is not saving souls, and in fact is questioning thelegitimacy of his religious calling when so many greater needs stand out.

It is not until Treadup is a Japanese POW that he begins to answer thequestions that have plagued him for years.In the prison camp he belongsto a group.The camp depends on him like it depends on all the individualsthat make up the whole, the goal is survival.Treadup doesn't have toidentify need, need has identified him.From his fellow prisoners he hearsthe Call, and realizes his original draw to Christianity was not religion,or saving souls, but being needed and employing his extraordinary abilityto successfully meet that need. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A stunner
I found this little treasure for a buck at an online auction and I love it!Go find it!

It left me going "what?"
It was a very interesting book with, in my humble opinion, a many possible interpretations. If you like that sort of thing, this could be a good book for you. Now, one could say it was a metaphor for the turmoil of thatperiod of time....or one could say some entirely different things about it.

Continues Hersey's fine journalistic skills. . .
in fictional form. Here lies Hersey's statement about the ennui pervadingthe late 1970's and early 1980's. It is important to actually *feel* theweariness Hersey deliberately writes into the book. Without that feeling,the reader will miss (or dismiss) Hersey's intent.

The bad kind of depressing.
I really loved HIROSHIMA and especially MY PETITION FOR MORE SPACE, so I picked up this one at a used book store.It is sort of like CATCHER IN THE RYE or A SEPARATE PEACE in that it is a story of young men away at school, and what that can be like.But this thing just went foul and relentlessly dour on me.The protagonist just spirals into this nastier and nastier situation and in the end is none the better for it (IMHO), hasn't learned anything, none of that stuff that is supposed to happen to protagonists.I felt horrible after finishing this, and it wasn't the "good" kind of horrible.Just depressed and sickened.I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 only because the writing itself is good; just the story was really really weak. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Watergate in Rome
It's inevitable for people to compare John Hersey's The Conspiracy to Thornton Wilder's Ides of March or Robert Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God. The comparisons are apt: all three authors used their extensive knowledge of Roman history to write glosses on their own times. But Hersey differs from the other two in presenting a far darker tale of the cynical and corrupt use of power and the paranoid behavior engendered in those who exercise it. Taking as his setting the creation and suppression of the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero in 64-65 BC, Hersey provides a devastating commentary of the Nixon presidency and its response to the Watergate crisis.

Hersey's epislatory novel is told primarily through the exchange of memoranda between Tigellinus, co-Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and various others, mainly Paenus, tribune of the secret police. These memoranda often include intercepted letters, especially those between the Stoic philosopher Seneca and his nephew, the poet Lucan. This technique allows Hersey to extend the number of voices in the first person and to provide insight into both sides of the conspiracy.

Hersey is a first-rate historian as well as novelist. Many of the novel's letters are based on the writings of his characters and the events recorded are generally accurate. His primary sources are Tacitus' Annals and Suetonius' Life of Nero. Seneca's words often are quoted from his Moral Epistles, as are parts of Lucan's Pharsalia.

Through the exchanges between Seneca and Lucan Hersey explores the demands of artistic expression and individual courage under tyranny, while those between Tigellinus and Paenus probe the nature of the corrupting influence of unbridled power. Reading this novel makes one wonder what dialogues between Robert Haldeman and Chuck Colson might have been like, as well as those between Sam Ervin and Ben Bradlee.

Continues Hersey's fine journalistic skills. . .
in fictional form. This book is a thinly-disguised description of theNixon presidency **preceding, and anticipating!** Watergate's paranoia. ... Read more

Product Description
THE WAR LOVER is about Buzz Morrow, a pilot who glorifies war and his military duties. Hersey makes the point that wars exist precisely because there are men like Buzz who revel in them. At the same time, he gives us a detailed account of a Flying Fortress crew based in England during WW II. The language is rough and expressive, revealing the loyalties, humor, and camaraderie existing in this wartime atmosphere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Tense, taut drama
Set in England during WW II, this suspenseful novel tells about the 24th (and last) mission flown by a group of airmen, with special emphasis on the pilot Buzz Marrow and co-pilot Charles Boman. Marrow is the daring, talented, overly macho leader whom everyone in the crew looks up to - except Boman, who has learned something about him from his lover Daphne. Two separate storylines wend their way through the novel, one concerned strictly with the mission at hand, the other going back in time and relating character background of the principal people.

In what he considers a major act of betrayal Boman learns from Daphne after she has slept with Marrow that Marrow is basically in love with his plane (named "The Body"), with the destructive power he wields during his bombing raids, with war itself - all in the most erotic of ways. In sleeping with him she reveals to Marrow his true nature, the knowledge of which he takes with him on that 24th mission, which ends disastrously with the plane crashing into the sea and Marrow choosing to go down with the sinking plane rather than be rescued.

Hersey develops his story with great assurance; the scenes with Bowman and Daphne as their feelings for each other blossom are very well done and believable. Not so believable is Daphne's motivation to sleep with Marrow (she's a strong character and seems as if she'd be above his caveman brutishness), but her justifying it to Boman as a reaction to her feeling that Boman didn't really love her and was coming to the end of his time in England anyway is honest enough to dilute much of the anger he's feeling toward her. It's a wise conclusion to the Daphne-Boman affair, even if it's just a bit too calculating as part of the plot structure. The novel presents an interesting and intense story of love in a number of ramifications within a wartime setting: love for others, self-love, and self-loathing in the name of love. Well done.

Good Detail, Bad Message
I suppose it takes guts to write an anti-war novel which takes place in World War II, because by attempting to discredit the war effort against Hitler, as The War Lover (and Catch-22) does, the author implicitly states that any war against any tyrant is improper, illegal and immoral. In The War Lover, there is a lot of interesting and apparently accurate period detail of life at an airbase in World War II, but beyond that, don't look here for anything worth reading.

This novel would be a good example for James Bowman's classic "Honor: A History" of how Western intellectuals abandoned the concept of honor in the Twentieth Century, which is the only thing that enabled us to stop Hitler. Buzz Morrow, the "war lover" of the title, is a good leader, but there is little else to distinguish him from anyone else. His end - where he collapses when the chips are down - comes without any sense of the character which would lead you to expect this development, an inexcusable lapse in a book so long and tedious.

Unlike, say, Herman Wouk in The Caine Mutiny, Mr. Hersey lacks the grace to give his warrior the credit where credit is due. True to form with the standard issue, plodding anti-war novel, Hersey's pacifistic intellectual turns out to be a better soldier than the true warrior. This intellectual pipe dream has become a cliche in the past 90 years. One hopes that Americans will never have to discover how false this illusion is.

Excellent Read
John Hersey has created a wonderfully thought-provoking book in The War Lover.Hersey combines a familiar setting, World War II, with unfamiliar human emotions -- emotions only experienced by those who fought in the war.Hersey also has a gift for using flashbacks to enlighten the reader about the underlying reasons for a character's thoughts, feelings, or actions.

One doesn't have to enjoy war literature to enjoy this book.It reaches way beyond the war, right into the human spirit. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: Baltimore, Md. : Hoffman ... Read more