“Journalism allows it's readers to witness history. Fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.”
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Author detail
John Richard Hersey (June 17, 1914 – March 24, 1993) was an American writer and journalist. He is considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reportage. In 1999, *Hiroshima,* Hersey's account of the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was adjudged the finest work of American journalism of the 20th century by a 36-member panel associated with New York University's journalism department. John Hersey was born in Tientsin, China, the son of missionaries. He returned to the United States with his family at the age of ten. He attended the Hotchkiss School, then Yale University, then Cambridge University. In 1937 he worked as a secretary for Sinclair Lewis, and that fall he got a position at *Time* magazine. Two years later he was transferred to Time's Chongqing bureau. During World War II he reported on the war in both Europe and Asia, writing articles for *Time, Life,* and *The New Yorker.* He published several books during this time, including *Men on Bataan*, *Into the Valley*, *A Bell for Adano* (which won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1945), and *Hiroshima*, his most famous work (originally published in *The New Yorker).* He also wrote *The Wall* (1950) about the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Hersey was the head of Pierson College at Yale University from 1965-1970, and he taught writing at the undergraduate level there.
Quotes
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“Journalism allows it's readers to witness history. Fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.”
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“The first stage had been all over before the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness; it was the direct reaction to the bombardment of the body, at the moment when the bomb w...”
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“The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destro...”
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“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima...”
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“Many people who did not die right away came down with nausea, headache, diarrhea, malaise, and fever, which lasted several days. Doctors could not be certain whether some of these symptoms w...”
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“The second stage set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. Its first symptom was falling hair. Diarrhea and fever, which in some cases went as high as 106, came next.”
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“It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.”
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“All morning they watched for the plane which they thought would be looking for them. They cursed war in general and PTs in particular. At about ten o'clock the hulk heaved a moist sigh and t...”
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