Hiroshima.

HERSEY, John.

$1,800.00

Item Number: 144305

New York: Milestone Editions, 1946.

First Milestone edition of Hersey’s classic work, which has sold over three million copies. Octavo, bound in full morocco by the Harcourt Bindery, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt inner dentelles stamp-signed by the Harcourt Bindery, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by the author on the title page, “For Peter Rubenstein: ‘The crux of the matter is whether total war…is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose.’ -p.122 John Hersey August, 1984.” In fine condition.

Hiroshima is a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey. It tells the stories of six survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, covering a period of time immediately prior to and one year after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945. "The quietest and the best of all the stories that have been written about the most spectacular explosion in the time of man" (New York Times Book Review). "John Hersey once described himself as a novelist of contemporary history In 1946 he visited Hiroshima, interviewed survivors of the first atomic bomb attack, and published the New Yorker article which changed him profoundly. In Hiroshima Hersey drew from the victims themselves the understanding of history that had eluded him as a war correspondent. The six Hiroshima residents told him how they had lived before the bomb struck, why they were not killed, and precisely how illness, exhaustion, and personal sorrow had qualified their survival" (Contemporary Novelists, 634).