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Published Jul 2015
416 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
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.
Published on the seventieth anniversary of the bombing, 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.
"Starred Review. [Nagasaki] provides the material and personal stories of one of the darkest days in human history.... One of the definitive histories of the end of World War II. Essential." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. A valiant, moving work of research certain to provoke vigorous discussion." - Kirkus
"Southard offers valuable new information and context, and her work complements John Hersey's 1946 classic, Hiroshima." - Publishers Weekly
This information about Nagasaki was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Susan Southard holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University/Los Angeles and was a nonfiction fellow at the Norman Mailer Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She is the founder and artistic director of Essential Theatre, a professional ensemble that presents interactive performances for marginalized communities. An early draft of Nagasaki was a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.
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