tionalistic. The book empathizes with their plight while it also gives an American explanation for the bombing (Stone, 7). That it was an act of war to end the war as quickly and as easily as possible, and to save more lives in the long run. Hersey did all this to provide what he considered an evenhanded portrayal of the event, but he also did not want to cause much controversy. Although it could be criticized for not giving a more detailed account of the suffering that occurred, and that it reads more like a history book than a piece of literature, Herseyصs book was the first of its kind when it was published. Up until then all accounts of the Hiroshima bombing writings about it took the slant that Japanese had زdeserved what we had given themس, and that we were good people for doing so. These accounts were extremely prejudicial and racist. (Stone, 4) Hersey was the first to take the point of view of those who had actually experienced the event. And his work was the transition between works that glorified the dropping of the atomic bomb, to those that focused on its amazing destructive powers, and what they could do to our world. During the period immediately after the war, not much information was available to general public concerning what kind of destruction the atomic bombs had actually caused in Japan. But starting with Herseyصs book and continuing with other non-fiction works, such as David Bradley’s No Place To Hide, which concerned the Bikini Island nuclear tests, Americans really began to get a picture of the awesome power and destructiveness of nuclear weapons. They saw that these really Gioielli 4were doomsday devices. Weapons that could change everything in an instant, and turn things into nothing in a moment. It was this realization that had a startling effect on American culture and literature. Some Americans began to say زAt any time we could all be shadows in the blast wave, so what&#...
