Rating: 
Summary: This book shows the truth about war.
Review: We are used to hearing about the numbers that died, and suffered. But what Hersey does with this book is he shows the people embedded in the statistics of war. When we wadge a war against another people we want them to be mean, vicious, and only conqurable by extreme measures. However this book dispells the propaganda and the politics. It moves you passed the biased depictions in American history books. It shows that we did not bomb the Japanese government that actually order the bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor. We bomb women preparing their children for school, and men reading the morning newspaper. I guess for some readers these victims seemed too human, too much like themselves and their families that they didn't like the feeling of empathy this book inspires for "the enemy." Hersey also shows that there may be other great atrocities against mankind with greater fatalities. However the repercussions of this event made countless succeeding generations suff! er like no other before its time. There is a scene in the book where a man reaches to help a person trapped. He reaches his hand for the person and the man's skin comes off, as though it were clay. In another scene the author descibes the misery some of the survivors had to suffer when their cells literally began to self-destruct releasing toxins and breaking down organs. These scenes show the graphic and true misery that spell the word war. If anything it should not put Americans on the defensive, it ahould inspire us to learn from our egregious mistakes and help to find a better way to resolve our international conflicts. Although we like to think of ourselves as being one nation under God, God was not on our side that day.
Rating:
Summary: Deffinatly a must read!!!!!!!
Review: Hiroshima is a sensational book that tells about the destruction of a nation, and definatly does its part in teaching about the effects of war. Instead of picking up a text book, pick up Hiroshima. Those who can read should read this book. John hersey captures the harsh truth of the way the atomic bomb changes the lives of the Japanese citazens. Along with reading about world war two this book must be read.
Rating: 
Summary: Hiroshima should be read but in historical perspective
Review: John Hersey's novel is a steadfast, poignant reminder of the impact of war on civilians. By focusing on a few individuals, Hersey brings home the lingering emotional and physical impact of first atomic bombing better than any subsequent writer on the subject. To this degree his work is an important literary contribution but hardly in the broader historical context. True, Hersey does not attempt to address the ethical issues surrounding Truman's decision to use the bomb and if the author's sole purpose was to intimately engage us with the personal dimensions of the aftermath, he should be lauded. Unfortunately, his work has been usurped by willfully ignorant liberals who are only too eager to assign this book to their dubiously historical archives. As another reviewer noted, no one seems to recall that in a two day period in mid-March, 1945 more civilians were killed in an incendiary raid on Tokyo-Yokohama than in the combined atomic bombings. The point here is not to quibble over casualty rates (human life is hardly a quibbling matter!) but to soberly pose the same question to ourselves that Truman and his advisers faced, namely, what made the bombings necessary? The most succinct response I have read to this question appears in the scholarly book "Truman and the Hiroshima Cult." I highly recommend it to the genuinely interested and the liberally befuddled. Consider what another reviewer has said: the Japanese were not the victims in this war and Japanese civilians were culpable. As a conservative estimate, the Japanese would have inflicted over 100,000 casualties on American forces in the first month of the Kyushu invasion. Let's stop conveniently villifying Truman and our other government leaders for once and ponder what we would have done if faced with the same enormous decision. Perhaps then we will see Hersey's book in a different, less strident, light.
Rating: 
Summary: One sided
Review: I recently read this book for my 10th grade English class and was devastated as an American the amount which this book shows the American government and people as the bad guys in a war they started. The book failed to point out that American and Japan were at war with each other. In an act of, yes, great human loss at the time, in turn ended the worst war in human history. I believe that the book does do a good job of illustrating the horrors of nuclear warfare, but that is it. It fails to state reasons why we had to do it. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is one of the defining points in history, and most controversial. If people who actually try to understand the reasons why it was necessary to end the war. I am pround as an American that we had a leader (Harry S. Truman) who had the guts to drop the bomb and end the worst war EVER. Just for any one who cares our fire bombing raids with the B-29 bombers killed many more people than the atomic bombs did, yet no one has made arrguments about why we shouldn't of fire bombed all those cities. Think about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Bombing of "the innocents"?
Review: If this book were offered in conjunction with treatises on the attack on Pearl Harbor, the brutality of the "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," and the rape of Nanking (recall the picture of the burned, wailing infant sitting in front of rows of burning buildings?), then it would be a valuable literary addition to our understanding of World War II. Sadly, it isn't. What you have is the worst, laziest kind of journalism--journalism by anecdote, the kind of cognitively defective writing that appeals to cognitively defective liberal high school teachers. This book rips Hiroshima from its context, and moreover paints an extremely biased picture of exactly who the Japanese civilians were, and what they thought about the War. Not a peep from Hersey about how the Japanese civilian citizenry was solidly behind the militarism of 1930s Japan, about their celebrations over the brutal, absolutely brutal, destruction and occupation of the Korean pennisula or Manchuria. Also no mention of the fact that the Japanese population was willing to fight to the last person if and when the Allies were to land on Honshu. Saipan and Okinawa were almost *nothing* compared to what awaited the Allies. No, Hersey didn't see fit to include the context of the bombing of Hiroshima; only the suffering...Ignorant Americans who lack even a rudimentary understanding of the Second World War will continue to lap up this journalistic detritus, blissfully unaware of brutality, militarism, and xenophobia brought about by Japan 1910-1945. But the book is not all anti-American propaganda. The best this book has to offer is an accurate portrayal of what a nuclear bomb actually does. Those wanna-be warmongers who casually talk about dropping nuclear bombs should first read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: I read it when i was 14 and it captivated me. One of the best reads I've ever experienced!
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: This book was one of the best, if not the best book i have ever read. It brought more to a bomb being dropped it told a story of what happened before, during, and after. It really hits you hard.
Rating:
Summary: This book should be read by ALL Americans
Review: I read this book a few years ago in college, and it devastated me. As an American, I could not rationalize what my country did to these innocent people. This book should be read by all Americans, particularly those in history classes. It will make us think twice before we bomb cities.
Rating:
Summary: MUST READ!!
Review: I read this book in grade school, and its impact is still felt greatly. It is easy for the reader to recoil in horror by the total devastation of Hiroshima. It also questions one to ask why we need an atomic bomb, or atomic warfare, when things could be settled diplomatically if given a chance. The dropping of the A-bomb is a turning point in all of world history, and this great account masterfully produced by John Hersey will be an excellent source, and a world classic, for all future time.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful book, definitely worth reading
Review: _Hiroshima_ brings a reader close to the victims. It portrays the events in a very human manner, thus causing more impact on the reader. It never talks about whether or not the atomic bomb was ethical; however, it shows what happens after the war to a handful of Hiroshima's citizens. The book was written in a simple, straight-forward manner, which makes it easier to understand.
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