Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War

Name: Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War
Author: Susan Southard
ISBN: 9780698195554

Susan Southard

award won

score

Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War

Susan Southard

award won

score

The enduring impact of a nuclear bomb, told through the stories of those who survived: necessary reading as the threat of nuclear war emerges again. On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a small port city on Japan's southernmost island. An estimated 74,000 people died within the first five months, and another 75,000 were injured. Nagasaki takes readers from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the first-hand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation. Susan Southard has spent years interviewing hibakusha ("bomb-affected people") and researching the physical, emotional, and social challenges of post-atomic life. She weaves together dramatic eyewitness accounts with searing analysis of the policies of censorship and denial that colored much of what was reported about the bombing both in the United States and Japan. A gripping narrative of human resilience, Nagasaki will help shape public discussion and debate over one of the most controversial wartime acts in history. Nagasaki won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist, The Washington Post, American Library Association, and Kirkus Reviews.

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