Born in China to missionaries, John Hersey began his journalism career as a correspondent for Time and went on to cover cover World War II for that magazine and Life. He had already won a Pulitzer Prize for a World War II novel he had written—A Bell for Adano (1944)—when in 1946 The New Yorker published in a single issue his most famous and enduring work, titled simply Hiroshima. The 31,147 word nonfiction story described the experiences of six survivors of the atomic bombing by the United States of the Japanese city. The bomb killed 78,150 people, injured 37,425, and left 13,983 missing. Forty years after Hiroshima appeared, Hersey updated the story with an epilogue telling how the lives of the six survivors had progressed. Overall, he published 25 books during his career.

Further Reading:

Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York, Random House, 1989.

Sanders, David. John Hersey Revisited. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1991.