Hersey, John

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Literary Journalism at its Finest
Another page turner
Frightful and Compelling
Hard to Like
"The hurt ones were quiet; no one wept, much less screamed in pain..."

Hiroshima
John Hersey
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0679721037
Release Date: 1989-03-04

Amazon.com

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict.

Book Description

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).

Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

Customer Reviews:

Literary Journalism at its Finest.......2007-06-12

Published in 1946, this remarkable article or book was based on interviews with survivors of the first city to be destroyed by a single weapon. John Hersey was a war correspondent during World War II. His "Hiroshima" has been rated as number one in The Top Ten Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century, as determined by The New York University journalism faculty and a panel of critics that included David Brinkley and Morley Safer. "Hiroshima" took over the entire August 30, 1946 issue of "The New Yorker" and the issue sold out within hours. After reading this rather slim book, I can understand why. It relates the stories of six survivors in a very interesting and readable way. Hersey makes us feel the impact of the bomb and its horrors in a very personal way, yet he doesn't go overboard on the gore. There is a follow-up study almost 40 years later, and we visit these same characters again. Surprisingly, none of the six hated the U.S.; they understood that drastic measures were neeeded to end a war that the Japanese obsessively fought; throwing reason out the window. The book can be read in an evening, but you will want to reread it, as well.

Another page turner.......2007-04-02

Read in one evening - dusk till dawn.

Extraordinary page-turner, captivating, heart-wrenching...

Frightful and Compelling.......2007-02-18

Journalist John Hersey (1914-1993) wrote this book through interviews with six surviving Japanese civilians only months after the bomb was dropped in August of 1945. His highly readable prose is both unforgettable and compelling. Hersey arrived in Japan and wrote this narrative shortly after the war ended, before we realized the frightful cancers and birth deformities that resulted from high exposure to radiation. But we do see the horrific suffering and confusion of those who were there, some blinded, others badly burned, many with their skin peeling off in their hands. This compelling book is not for the faint-of-heart, but it illustrates the affects of the bomb on those who were there.

Some readers correctly point out that Japan's army had raped and murdered its way through Asia, and that the bomb may have ultimately shortened the war and saved lives by forestalling a U.S. invasion of Japan's home islands. Still, this is a frightful and moving account seen through the eyes of those who suffered the most.

Hard to Like.......2006-11-20

So I would give this five stars, but I just can't. This book captivated me, I couldn't put it down and all that, but it's about the death of countless thousands of people. You can't love or like a book about this subject matter. It reads well and is put together well. Following the plight of six A-Bomb victims is a horrifying experience. This updated version has an additional, "Aftermath" chapter in which the lives of these six individuals is updated to around 1980. I find myself looking at humanity differently now. What the crap!? How something like this happened and how little it is talked about is unbelievable. Having read basically nothing else about this subject I would have to say that this book is a good point to start at that will not allow you to ignore this piece of human happening any farther. What happened and how what happened was treated is a true sign of how sad and despicable human beings can be. This should be required reading for everyone.

"The hurt ones were quiet; no one wept, much less screamed in pain...".......2006-09-17

When the atomic bomb dropped at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a thriving city of two hundred forty-five thousand people. By 8:20, one hundred thousand of those people were dead. Combining the broad perspective of the absolute devastation of the city with the tiniest details of six individual lives, John Hersey provides a powerful closeup of a few survivors of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, giving the carnage a human perspective.

Focusing on Mr. Tanimoto, a Methodist pastor; Mrs. Nakamura, the widow of a tailor, and her three children; Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a physician in a private clinic; Fr. Wilhelm Kleinsorge, S. J, a priest in a Catholic mission; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital; and Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in a tin works, as they survive the initial attack, the author follows their daily movements, their subsequent illnesses, their fears, and the eventual outcomes of their lives. The victims become human, and their concerns become universal, as Hersey shows them digging themselves out and helping their neighbors, filled with an "elated community spirit" in the days and weeks after the bombing.

Details of the fires following the bombing, the unexpected radiation sickness, the mysteries surrounding the kind of bomb this was (some Japanese believed that the allies had sprinkled powdered magnesium over the city and then ignited it), the devastating rains that followed, and the monumental scale of the damage are presented in straightforward, factual style, the horrors of the reality so overwhelming that Hersey had no need to try to control his narrative by selecting details or ordering them for effect.

Published in the New Yorker in August, 1946, this anniversary remembrance had immediate and dramatic repercussions, perhaps because the focus on "ordinary" Japanese citizens, much like the Americans who read the article, as opposed to "the enemy," resonated with his readers. Thousands listened to four days of its reading on ABC radio, and many others bought the New Yorker to read his account. By raising also the question of the ethics of dropping such a bomb (which some of the Japanese agree was acceptable as a normal part of the war), he also forces his readers to consider the long-term implications of atomic warfare. Dramatic, powerful, and very personal, this account of six lives, changed forever, is a monument to the human spirit in the face of incredible adversity. n Mary Whipple

Average customer rating:

Thoroughly Enjoyable
Great Read
Decency wins out over adversity
A fun book for an airplane ride
Head: No way. Heart: Yes, yes!

A Bell for Adano
John Hersey
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0394756959
Release Date: 1988-03-12

Book Description

An Italian-American major in World War II wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700 year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists.

Customer Reviews:

Thoroughly Enjoyable.......2007-06-25

A great story and great dialogue. This is a well constructed book that has great characters and great imagery but also manages to keep the story moving along. While i am sure my enjoyment was enhanced because i read it while in Italy, I would have enjoyed reading this anywhere. It is a great portrait of small town Italy and of people.
It is also interesting in this story of the US liberation of Italy, that it was written in the mid-1940s and has a thinly-veiled very negative portrayl of General Patton.

Great Read.......2007-05-02

I read this back in High School in the sixties. I recently saw the movie and remarked how I did not remember much of anything about it, so I got the book and read it. It is an easy read and quite entertaining. The movie is excellent but the book is outstanding. It is charming, warm and real. It demonstrates that in this world we have bureaucrats and politicians out for themselves (like Gen. Marvin.) We have people who want to do better but cannot because they are jaded(Borth, Purvis). And fortunately we have some Jopollos who are kind and caring. Too bad there are not many of them in leadership. They are lacking even in the church but there are notable exceptions. I recommend this to anyone looking to read soemthing inspirational to life them out of the doldrums. I had read Hiroshima and that seems to get more attention than this work. This is a thoroughly worthwhile read.

Decency wins out over adversity.......2006-08-11

This is John Hersey's wonderful "feel good" novel set in Italy during WW II. Major Victor Joppolo has been assigned senior civil affairs officer of the allied occupied town of Adano. Joppolo, an Italian-American, is a good man who only wants to do what is best for the town. He befriends the town's citizens, determines their needs, and tries to accommodate them. In addition to the major concern of getting the people fed, he learns that the town once had a bell that was rung every quarter-hour until Mussolini had it removed to be melted down for ammunition. Joppolo goes on a mission to get the bell back or replaced somehow.

Of course there must be a black hat countering Joppolo's every good move, and that person is General Marvin, the dictatorial, self-important, and ultimately destructive Commander-in-Chief - obviously based on Gen. George Patton. Joppolo is willing to bend and even subvert orders to accomplish what he perceives his task to be: to bring order, decency, and democracy to the war-torn and defeated town. He succeeds marvelously, despite Marvin's interference, and receives the praises of all the Italian civilians he deals with (sometimes this is overdone just a wee bit). Hersey's Italian characters are warm and very human; especially good are the proud fisherman Tomasino and Joppolo's interpreter Giuseppe. Hersey based his novel on a short article he'd written for LIFE magazine, which told of a visit he'd made to the American military governor at Licata, Italy, in 1943. The book is entertaining and life-affirming - interesting for a war novel.

A fun book for an airplane ride.......2006-04-09

which is when I read it between Toronto and Rome. This is a fun, slight book which gives a few unique insights into Italy, the war and the U.S. Army. I kind of wished it was more hard hitting but the author was writing in the 40s a more innocent, less critical time.

Head: No way. Heart: Yes, yes!.......2004-04-26

My head read this book and said: "If only Iraq were this easy. The Americans invade Sicily in World War II and Major Joppolo is put in charge of the small town of Adano. Despite the grisly casualties in the taking of the town, the whole place falls instantly in love with the American major. And what about those ethnic stereotypes? The Sicilians all seem like goodhearted but slightly retarded children, an impression reinforced by their comical dialogue, both when they speak English ("Okay, a boss, you're a not a kid Giuseppe") and in literal translation, when they speak their native language (so "Viva il Signor Capitano!" becomes "Live the Mr. Captain!"). Sicilians who were there during the war say it was not this way at all: the Americans installed members of the mafia as mayors to keep the Sicilians under control."

My heart, who also read the book, replied: "You just don't understand. This is a beautiful tale about how a single individual can make a difference. Two vastly different worlds collide, but the result is pure magic because Major Joppolo throws the rule book away and reaches out to the town with his heart, inventing novel solutions to problems, trying to get a replacement for the bell that the Germans stole, and, above all, connecting with the people. The humor is marvelous: The scene in which the priest holds an interminable church service waiting for the major, who promised to attend but who has lost track of the time, will guarantee at least one chuckle. And Hersey choreographed the poignant scene when the Italian prisoners of war come home to their women as pure ballet."

Book Description

A young American engineer sent to China to inspect the unruly Yangtze River travels up through the river's gorges searching for dam sites. Pulled on a junk hauled by forty-odd trackers, he is carried, too, into the settled, ancient way of life of the people of the Yangtze -- until the interplay of his life with theirs comes to a dramatic climax.

Customer Reviews:

A Single Pebble by Hershey is brilliant........2005-06-16

Hershey has written a small, but very powerful book. It is full of whimsey and cultural contrasts. It entertains such questions as what is true progress. Indeed, it is a great book for group discussions.

A Single Pebble.......2003-12-03

A single pebble is probably one of the few books in my life that I would read more than once. I like the clash between cultures because it is something we could all relate to if we have traveled to another country. The story is about a young engineer who goes on a journey up the Yangtze River trying to find a good spot to build a dam to make the river safer for boats. The young engineer is faced with many challenges such as the language barrier between himself and the boats crew and the fact that no one else on the boat wants him there because they think he is bad luck. He also starts to think that he is bad luck because on the trip their lead tracker falls into the river to his death, and he blammed the the trackers death on himself. Over all, the book was good with a mix of a little bit of action and some suspence to make you want to keep reading.

Not Among Hersey's Greatest Works.......2003-07-19

Many of Hersey's other books are moving, memorable stories. A Bell for Adano and Hiroshima are among Hersey's best, and these books should be read by any well-rounded individual. A Single Pebble, however, is more forgetable. Hersey does do a good job presenting the clash between traditional Chinese culture and modern Western culture in the early twentieth century. However, the clash between the main character, an engineer representing Western culture, and another leading character, a boatsman representing traditional Chinese culture, is so artificially strong that the reader can sympathize with neither character or position. The book anticlimaxes and concludes with some overly abstract thoughts on the future of China. Ultimately, it is not a book of the same quality as many of Hersey's other works, nor is it a story of the same quality as other stories (in multiple media) that probe the differences between East Asian and Eurpoean culture.

Revisiting A Single Pebble.......2001-11-15

Although published almost 50 years ago, this book deserves another look using a modern, critical lens. Overshadowed by Hersey's other works, specifically Hiroshima and A Bell for Adano, A Single Pebble offers a great deal to the reader. The book is far more than a fictionalized travelogue of a trip up the Yangtse River. It is a work that documents exposure to the acts and ideas of another culture by an American used to thinking of himself as representative of all that is modern and educated, and therefore all that is to be considered as desireable or superior. As a reader, I came away from the book with the idea that all that I think glitters may not be gold. It should be noted, however, that this is not an American-bashing book; both sides--the narrator and the Chinese people he meets--are guilty of a type of national myopia when viewing the "Other" in their midst. Those interested in Postcolonial and Cultural studies will find plenty to occupy them, whichever side of the debate they fall on.

A Single Pebble.......2001-09-26

I was required to read the book "A Single Pebble," for summer reading. I thought it would be terrible, but I loved it. The book is a symbolic novel, about a boy that goes to china looking for a place to build a dam. He went there thinking he would be superior to all the others on the boat, but shortly realized he was looked down upon. The engineer experiences a culture shock, and is upset to find out the trackers, owner, and old pebble are upset that he wants to build a dam, even if it will help them. He later decides whether to blame himself for the death of a crew member- believing he killed himself as fear for change in the ways of the river. As he rides the junk, he learns of chinese tradition, fear, and superstitions, and faces the mighty power of the great Yangzee River

Lewis: Main Street and Babbitt (Library of America)

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Beautiful edition of two important American novels
Relevant to today's Society
America the beautiful?

Lewis: Main Street and Babbitt (Library of America)
Sinclair Lewis
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0940450615

Book Description

Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to explore middle-class life in America as no writer had done before. These remarkable novels combine biting satire with an lingering affection for the men and women who, as he wrote of Babbitt, want to "seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late." "Main Street" was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history; it is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her Midwestern community where the romance of the frontier has dwindled to drab reality. "He is America incarnate, exuberant and exqusite," H.L. Mencken said of George Babbitt. With this boisterous, vulgar, gadget-loving real estate man, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature, the total conformist--and captured the noisy restlessness of American commercial culture.

Customer Reviews:

Beautiful edition of two important American novels.......2004-11-09

These two novels have changed their reason for importance since they were written. When new, they were very current. Full of fashionable slang, capturing the rising tide of America's urbanization, female independence, new machines, greater sexual license, and the pressures all this put on an agrarian culture. Now they capture memories of a time that seems more distant than it is. All of it seems so innocent and simple. Yes, the writing is very good if not great and the characters still do live, but their context is a memory.

Lewis' writing is certainly effective, memorable, and attractive. All reasons to keep reading him and enjoying the stories and thinking about what he has to say. I think what keeps him from being timeless is that it seems to be all about evoking a time and place. There is certainly nothing wrong in doing that; it is just that as the times change the writing may not survive being transplanted into the new context. I think it is a testament to the author's power that he is still read and lives in our present, even if his influence continues to diminish.

At the end of "Main Street" when Carol Kennicott says, "But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures by sneering at my aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond them." I think we admire her. However, when she continues, "I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dishwashing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith." any intended irony is made more strange by the added irony of history and cultural change since these words were written. It all feels more distant and even unnecessarily argued given where we are now. Do young people today even wash dishes? Europe generous?

The name Babbitt lives on as a kind of archetype. When someone is called a Babbitt, everyone of a certain age and older knows exactly what is meant. When I grew up in the `60s he was revived as an epithet for our parents' generation and yet the baby boomers became more conformist and materialistic than any previous generation. Maybe that is why we haven't taught George F. Babbitt and his exploits to our children as well as we might have.

The perfect sentence for Babbitt is, I think: "Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School." Will anything else help you understand his character more fully?

The Library of America is a largely magnificent series of very handsomely done editions that are of such quality that they are permanent additions to your library. I love having them on my shelf. They are a joy to read, hold, and admire. In addition to the two novels there is a chronology of Lewis' life that serves as a mini-bio, John Hersey provided the notes on the text. A fine edition of two important American novels.

Relevant to today's Society.......2002-03-21

I read "Main Street" several years ago. It impressed me then and the memory of it has stayed with me. I had previously read "Babitt" and "Arrowsmith" which were both good novels but neither compared to "Main Street". Both previous novels poked fun at small town middle America. As a resident of North Dakota, I got a good chuckle over Lewis's portrayal of Arrowsmith's brief trip to our fair state. My recollections of "Babitt" are that it was rather satirical in its' imagery of a shallow well-to-do man. All of us could chuckle at him because he reminded us of so many people we knew. The impact of "Main Street", to me, is how we see the world through the eyes of the main character; the doctor's wife. She is a real person dealing with real observations about real people in a real community. Something in her clicks and says, "this is all too shallow, too plastic, too predetermined". We agree with her and yet feel somewhat uncomfortable in doing so because there is so much that she questions and much of it we have already accepted. I was extremely impressed with Lewis's portrayal of this feminine character and how he chose her (as opposed, for example, to her husband) to be the eyes of his reality. For that time and place, it was, I think, a bold move on the author's part. And it works! I remeber the impact of her questioning her relationship with her husband. It almost seemed like a scene out of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

This book was the one that made Lewis notorious in his own home town. I expected to have to appreciate the times to be able to appreciate the book. I found myself sensing issues and scenarios that are just as common and real today. If you only have time for one book by America's first Nobel Prize-winning author, I recommend that you select this one to read. You won't be sorry!

America the beautiful?.......2000-04-08

Both Mainstreet and Babbitt are critical and realistic apraisels of life in America. More specifically mid-western America. Carl Van Doren commented saying,"Not one of them ( the contemporaries of Lewis) has kept so close to the main channel of American life as Mr. Lewis or so near to the human surface. He is part of a channel and a surface. To venture into hyperbole, not only is he one American telling stories, but he is America telling stories." These books once swept the nation with controversy due to their honesty of American life. I would recommend these books to anyone who enjoy books about people and the details concerning their lives, dreams and aspiratins. Lewis slowly draws the reader into the ever intricate and mediocre lives of the characters. While the stories are rarely fast paced they are certainly worth the read. If I had to make any recommendation I would advise reading Babbitt first due to the fact that it is more involving and fluid than Mainstreet. In addition to the two novels this book is published under a beautiful binding made to library standards. Enjoy.

Average customer rating:

Great for what it is
Told As It Was

Into the Valley: Marines at Guadalcanal
John Hersey
Manufacturer: Bison Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0803273282

Book Description

John Hersey (1914–93) was a correspondent for Time and Life magazines when in 1942 he was sent to cover Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific. While there, Hersey observed a small battle upon which Into the Valley is based. While the battle itself was not of great significance, Hersey gives insightful details concerning the jungle environment, recounts conversations among the men before, during, and after battle, and describes how the wounded were evacuated as well as other works of daily heroism.

Customer Reviews:

Great for what it is.......2007-04-06

I was pretty surprised by how short this book was -- not counting illustrations, there are maybe 45-50 pages of content here. That said, it gives a really good perspective on being in battle and how the every-day must have been. It feels a little "cleaned up" and therefore slightly propagandistic (e.g., no one swears, no one is lazy, everyone is helpful to the writer, etc.), but for me at least, that's also helpful in understanding the time and place. The other issue is that you never for a moment forget that this is being written by a journalist (and not by an infantryman) -- the book never pretends to be anything else, though, and the reporter's POV is still useful and in some ways perhaps better for its "objective" third-partyness.

All-in-all, worthwhile for anyone interested in the subject matter.

bkd

Told As It Was.......2003-09-01

Please do not be put off by fours stars: this is a superb book about early WWII written by someone who 'was there'. The lack of a fifth star merely reflects my desire to have seen a longer, even more in-depth, book. I was born in 1950, so my knowledge of those days is gained mostly by people like John Hersey. Also, my uncle (and namesake) was a member of Edson's Raiders--and he was there, too. I have had the great good fortune to have met many of the Raiders and others on Guadalcanal and I find "Into the Valley" to be most accurate of the descriptions told to me by these veterans. All human, the Marines had to draw on their training and leadership to get themselves through the bitter fighting and to prevail against unsettling odds on Guadalcanal. Hersey allows us to see the Marines as human--young boys and men, for the most part. He paints success and he paints failure with an honest brush. This is a "must read" for anyone interested in WWII and the South Pacific.

Average customer rating:

Huge, Haunting, and Heroic
An ambitious book
This story sticks to your bones
Very Magnetic
Very Magnetic

The Wall
John Hersey
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Mila 18
A Single Pebble
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The Fixer: A Novel
Hiroshima

ASIN: 0394756967
Release Date: 1988-03-12

Book Description

Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty -- a gripping and visceral story, impossible to put down.

Customer Reviews:

Huge, Haunting, and Heroic.......2006-06-19

This is John Hersey's stunning novel about the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WW II. It's a huge, sprawling book, and revolves around upwards of fifty different characters in their struggle to survive Nazi atrocities within the ghetto. Hersey based much of the novel on thousands of pages of original source material written in Polish and Yiddish by Jews in Warsaw. A handful of the characters begin to take center stage and relate what's going on and their feelings and impressions through first-person narratives: Dolek Berson, Pavel Menkes, Henryck Rapaport, Rachel Apt, and especially Noach Levinson become leaders of the "Jewish family" that first confront the Germans and then finally escape as the last buildings are being razed. With so many characters we witness the vast array of human qualities, from the strong to the weak, the resourceful and resilient to the helpless and feeble. Not only is the book an indictment of the horrors that people are able and willing to inflict on others, it's a rousing hurrah for those who fight against and somehow survive the torture and humiliation. The book is an amazing achievement, certainly Hersey's greatest novel.

An ambitious book.......2006-03-31

This book seems to be based on the real-life diaries of Emanuel Ringelblum, whose copious writings were unearthed after WWII, and also takes a similar form to the novel 'Mila 18,' which is also based around journal entries taking place in Warsaw during WWII. This particular journal was kept by Noach Levinson, whom we find out in the foreword died in March of 1944 of TB, and was unearthed by several of the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, it isn't the normal book told in journal form, since Noach mostly describes what happens around him and to other people instead of just focusing on himself and his own feelings. Many of the entries are told from the point of view of other characters, who later related their stories and feelings to Noach, even opening up to him about very personal private matters. I would strongly recommend it to people looking to read more in this sub-genre of Shoah literature, right up there with 'Mila 18' and Ringelblum's actual journals.

However, this book was a little slow at first for me, but it quickly became more interesting and faster-paced. And I'm hardly one to talk since my own writing features a lot of characters as well, but sometimes it was hard to remember who was whom because there were so many characters, even minor secondary characters, and sometimes these characters would go unmentioned for pages at a time, making it a bit difficult to get a picture of just what this person's significance was or even what this person was like. In a book with a lot of characters, it's easier to keep track of everyone if characters are introduced and developed at around the same time instead of just popping up sporadically. As a result, I didn't feel attached to all of these characters in the same way. Still, that's a relatively minor criticism given that the subject matter itself is so engrossing and detailed.

My other relatively minor issue with the book is the writing style itself. Sometimes it does seem a little pretentious or confusing how an entry will be broken up midway through with an insert in brackets, an insert containing an older entry or an entry that would be written at a future date, or notes from conversations that took place while the survivors were hiding in a sewer after the revolt, on a subject related to the main entry. This occasional nonlinear structure didn't really seem that effective or natural to me. There were also a number of inserts in brackets referencing older entries; even if this was meant to be told in a journalistic matter, that still seems a bit pretentious in a work of fiction, kind of interrupting the natural flow of the story. I also wished there had been some sort of afterword, providing more of a sense of closure on what happened to the survivors after they were taken from the sewer to the partisans in the woods. I was left wondering what had happened to some of the characters who had escaped the Ghetto and were now living on the Aryan side, like Rachel's father and sister, or Rachel's little brother David, who was in a secret convoy going to Palestine. Still, all in all, in spite of a few comparatively minor shortcomings, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in this particular sub-genre of Shoah literature.

This story sticks to your bones.......2004-09-15

You can read the other reviews to get an idea as to what the story covers, but I want to share with you my experience as to the impact of its delivery and tale. I read a lot. And it's rare for a book to make me laugh out loud or cry tears. At first, I neither liked nor cared for any of the characters. At the end, I cried; hard. I've never had a story affect me this way.

Very Magnetic.......2003-01-02

This book is definitely a powerful book regarding the life during the Holocaust. To be more specific, the novel is written in a journalistic manner, where it's author is Noach Levinson. He describes the occurences of all those of whom are close to him.
It is very interesting to how detailed John Hersey has went in describing the happenings of a city in Germany named Warsaw.
Definitely a must read for all those interested in learning about the ghettos during the holocaust. It truley keeps your eyes glued to the book.

Very Magnetic.......2003-01-02

Here To Stay - Studies in Human Tenacity

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Here To Stay - Studies in Human Tenacity
John Hersey
Manufacturer: Alfred A Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I5TN9G

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If nothing else, certainly brilliant and thought-provoking
Topic great, writers not so great.
I thought I hated it at points, but I've never been able to get it out of my head.
A Classic
A Puzzle to be piece together....

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
James Agee
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0395488974

Amazon.com

Just what kind of book is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? It contains many things: poems; confessional reveries; disquisitions on the proper way to listen to Beethoven; snippets of dialogue, both real and imagined; a lengthy response to a survey from the Partisan Review; exhaustive catalogs of furniture, clothing, objects, and smells. And then there are Walker Evans's famously stark portraits of depression-era sharecroppers--photographs that both stand apart from and reinforce James Agee's words.

Assigned to do a story for Fortune magazine about sharecroppers in the Deep South, Agee and Evans spent four weeks living with a poor white tenant family, winning the Burroughs's trust and immersing themselves in a sharecropper's daily existence. Given a first draft of the resulting article, the editors at Fortune quite understandably threw up their hands--as did several other editors who subsequently worked with a later book-length manuscript. The writing was contrary. It refused to accommodate itself to the reader, and at times it positively bristled with hostility. (What other book could take Marx as the epigraph and then announce: "These words are quoted here to mislead those who will be misled by them"?) Response to the book was puzzled or unfriendly, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sputtered out of print only a few short years after its publication. It took the 1960s, and a vogue for social justice, to bring Agee's masterwork the audience it deserved.

Yet the book is far more interesting--aesthetically and morally--than the sort of guilty-liberal tract for which it is often mistaken. On an existential level, Agee's text is a deeply felt examination of what it means to suffer, to struggle to live in spite of suffering. On a personal level, it is the painful, beautifully written portrait of one man's obsession. In its collaboration with Evans's photographs, the book is also a groundbreaking experiment in form. In the end, however, it is more than merely the sum of its parts. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is, quite simply, a book unlike any other, simmering with anger and beauty and mystery. --Mary Park

Book Description

The clasic that became the prototype of the modern nonfiction novel. A watershed literary event at its first publication in 1941, LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN is an "unsparing record of the harsh existence of three Alabama families, and a poetic meditation on the terrible beauty of their lives," recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the century.

Customer Reviews:

If nothing else, certainly brilliant and thought-provoking.......2006-09-16

Let us Now Praise Famous Men, in all its poetry and prose, reminds me of an epic, like the Hindu Mahabharata or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The lyrical narrative reveals just as much, if not more about Agee, than his subjects. His writing style excludes his subjects as readers.

His prose, which tends to be lofty and cerebral, is also beautiful and brilliant. But, I often wondered, who he was
writing for? The New Yorker audience? The distance in his observations often left me feeling cold. I imagine these hardworking sharecroppers exhibiting some joy, some evidence of warmth, of hope. But I had difficulty finding it in Agee's voice.

The length of Agee's sentences and paragraphs were long, each containing an entire scene, and I labored through them, hoping sleep would not steal me from a passage I might not finish. It was as though Agee too, was afraid sleep would come and steal him from his mission, and so kept hacking away at each sentence, adding commas and colons and semi-colons, lingering his thoughts across the page.

Whatever level of consciousness Agee existed, I could not hang with him for any more than a couple of sentences, as I would fall off the page and have to find my way back into the scene. Where was I? You get the picture...

Agee also uses parenthesis and colons, often not giving his parenthesis a mate: (This struck me as rather unusual and often, cold and detached--more like a voyeur. Did he fabricate his own method of communication using punctuation or was this being done elsewhere at the time? I felt left out of his thoughts when he did this, like when two people are communicating via sign language and you can't make out a word they're saying. Was he doing this in a way to urge us to "think," to stretch beyond the ordinary conventions and try something on that is foreign and unfamiliar, like his subjects and their hardship?

Topic great, writers not so great........2006-05-27

The eloquence of composition surely necessitated infinite use of superlatives and verbs, resulting in a requisite painstaking remostrance to the reader, thus fettering the effusion and disembogulation of the document. In other words, wouldn't it have been better to just leave all of the fluff out of the book and just write as if the reader is someone other than the Queen of England? If you can weed through all of excessive use poems and verbs, it's a halfway decent book

I thought I hated it at points, but I've never been able to get it out of my head........2005-09-23

This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.

UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.

A Classic.......2005-08-05

Excellent editon of this wonderful, classic work. A series of visual and verbal snapshots of the South as a third world country, the South of the 1930's.

A Puzzle to be piece together...........2004-04-12

James Agee's book on the sharecroppers of the American south during the great depression is a book not to be taken lightly. I read this book for a college english class and I can honestly say that most people in the course including myself are confused by Agee's intent and purpose. Agee's highly lyrical and philosophical tone allows a deep analysis into the question of human existence in the depression south. Yet, the very scope and difficulty of his subject is expressed in his confused, perhaps confusing writing. There are lonely moments of insight stacked alongside pages of seemingly irrelevant and baseless speculation. I say seemingly because each time I re-read the passage I find that Agee's words have quite a bit more meaning than I had originally found. This book is not a novel, not journalism but a puzzle which Agee could not piece together. Only with time and care can the reader hope to understand the frustratingly complex yet real message of Agee's work.

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The Call (SIGNED FIRST EDITION SOCIETY)
John Hersey
Manufacturer: Franklin Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Leather Bound
ASIN: B000CBARQO

Product Description

Limited signed TRUE first edition

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Detroit Racism Comes Alive
The book told the untold truth about what happen that night!

The Algiers Motel Incident
John Hersey , and William J. Eisen
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801857775

Book Description

"Hersey's book is based on months of personal investigation and contains evidence never before made public. He ransacked every available piece of documentation. Thus armed, he tried to work out a tentative scenario of events and, more important, used his data to build up what may be the truest picture yet of the white policeman's role in the ghettos... His collage of interviews, fact, and intuition... jells into a forceful dossier against racism in the U.S. system of justice." -- R.A. Sokolov, Newsweek

Thirty years ago, three black men were killed and nine other people brutally beaten by, as John Hersey describes it in The Algiers Motel Incident, an "aggregate of Detroit police, Michigan State Troopers, National Guardsmen, and private guards who had been directed to the scene." Responding to a telephoned report of sniping, the police group invaded the Algiers Motel and interrogated ten black men and two white women, none of whom were armed, for an hour. By the time the interrogators left, three men had been shot to death and the others, including the women, beaten.

Customer Reviews:

Detroit Racism Comes Alive.......2002-02-26

John Hersey needs no raves from me. At chronicalling the major events of the 20th century in living prose he has absolutely no peer. In this book he focuses in on the entire racist system acting in one chilling incident of the Detroit Riot of 1967, in which the police, trapping several people of mixed ethnicity tortured some of them, murdered others, and could not be brought to justice.

The book told the untold truth about what happen that night!.......1999-11-06

I am the niece of Carl Cooper, and I am glad that John wrote the book! I was told that John may have been killed over the book. The book told the truth about white cops in those days. My grandmother (Carl Cooper's Mother) has never been the same since my uncle's death. When he died it took apart of her that she will never beable to regain.

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