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Hayashi Shigeo |
Shirabe Hitomi |
PRAISE FOR
NAGASAKI: LIFE AFTER NUCLEAR WAR
Winner
Dayton Literary Peace Prize
J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism
and Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism
A Best Book of the Year
The Washington Post · The Economist · American Library Association · Kirkus Reviews
Finalist
Ridenhour Book Prize · Chautauqua Prize · PEN Center USA Literary Award ·
William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War essentially begins where John Hersey’s famous 1946 work Hiroshima ends. Southard benefits from access first and foremost to the survivors she renders with a gentle reverence and sympathy. Americans have largely avoided stories from the point of view of the surviving civilian populations of the only two atomic attacks because of our inward-gazing moral questioning and, redoubling the erasure, because Hiroshima, the first victim, tends to obscure Nagasaki. Southard’s work thus illuminates an absence in our own history. Far beyond a reductionist argument about whether to use nuclear weapons, this is a profound inquiry into the extremes of human violence and what it does to both victim and victimizer. It is essential reading in our hyper-violent time.
— Ruben Martinez, finalist judge, 2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize
“With lean and powerful prose, [Southard] describes the indescribable, taking the reader almost minute by minute through the bombing of Nagasaki and then the aftermath…Seventy years later, following the lives of survivors, she reaches the final chapter and at last tells the complete story.”
—Judges’ Citation, 2016 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
“Susan Southard does for Nagasaki what John Hersey did for Hiroshima, and more. She takes us beneath the mushroom cloud with harrowing, damning, eloquent intimacy—and then through ensuing decades of individual and civic recovery right up to the present day. Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War is scrupulous, passionate, and compassionate history at its very best.”
—John W. Dower, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
“Magnificent and necessary . . . Reading [Nagasaki] is a powerful way to engage with the moral conundrums surrounding our country’s use of atomic weapons. . . . Let us hope that many will read this important book.”
—Los Angeles Times
“An intimate chronicle of individual lives: like a good documentary filmmaker, Southard allows her subjects, with all their attractive and quirky qualities, to speak for themselves.”
—Financial Times
“Nagasaki is a devastating read that highlights man’s capacity to wreak destruction, but in which one also catches a glimpse of all that is best about people.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Beautifully written, weaving history and story.”
—Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History
“Thoughtful and deeply affecting . . . A damning indictment of nuclear weapons and an inspiring reminder that some people prevail, even in the face of impossible odds.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Southard’s vivid stories of five Nagasaki survivors powerfully illustrates the second atomic bombing and seventy years of life in the nuclear age. This book is the most extraordinary account ever written by an American author.”
—Dr. Tomonaga Masao, former director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital
“[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 poignant and complex picture of the second atomic bomb’s enduring physical and psychological tolls. Eyewitness accounts are visceral and haunting. . . . But the book’s biggest achievement is its treatment of the aftershocks in the decades since 1945.”
—The New Yorker
“The merits of Southard’s book are clear. It was bad enough for the Americans to have killed so many people and then hide the gruesome facts for many years after the war. To forget about the massacre now would be an added insult to the victims. Southard has helped to make sure this will not happen yet.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“American politicians debating the nuclear deal with Iran would do well to spend some time with Southard’s Nagasaki. It does not tell us what to do. It only reminds us of the stakes.”
—The Washington Post
“Monumental . . . A riveting, if chilling, plunge into nuclear realities.”
—TomDispatch
“Despite the gravity of her subject, Southard writes in an engaging narrative style that propels the reader through the phantasmagoric horrors of nuclear extermination and its aftermath.”
—Japan Times
“[A] reminder of just how horrible nuclear weapons are.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Southard performs a great service in rescuing their stories from extinction. Seventy years on, as our memories fade, this book horrifyingly and sometimes beautifully brings the events and their aftermath alive again—and forces us to reexamine the supposed rationale for inflicting such misery.”
—David Pilling, Asia editor, Financial Times, and author of Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival
“Grimly excellent . . . The grace and resilience of these survivors actually works to infuse the latter portions of her book with an air of the last thing readers might expect from a book of this kind: hope.”
—The National
“Timely, masterful storytelling . . . A crucial, historical record woven with lessons learned that we must not forget.”
—Lucy Birmingham, coauthor of Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan’s Earthquake,
Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
“A powerful and poignant account of the impact of nuclear war on civilians.”
—Tulsa World
“Based on years of interviews and research, this account of the physical, emotional, and social fallout of surviving such an event will be a testimony like no other.”
—Biographile
“Powerful and uncompromising.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“Explicit and penetrating, a haunting and humane look at one of the most contentious acts of war in world history. Southard provides a voice to the thousands who died and for those who have suffered for the past seventy years.”
—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“Harrowing . . . Damning yet necessary.” —Flavorwire
“Magnificent . . . Southard moves expertly between the life stories of the survivors. . . . It is hard to think of another book like this.”
—Japan Society of the United Kingdom
“[Nagasaki] presents [the] searing, heartbreaking reality of nuclear warfare.”
—New York Daily News
“Southard offers valuable new information and context, and her work complements John Hersey’s 1946 classic, Hiroshima.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Intense, deeply detailed, and compassionate account of the atomic bomb’s effects on the people and city of Nagasaki, then and now . . . A valiant, moving work of research certain to provoke vigorous discussion.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Anyone who doubts the potential devastation of nuclear war would do well to read this engrossing book…A masterpiece of nonfiction writing.”
—Bill Williams, SpokaneFAVS.com
