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anhedonia_n_anomie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
An incredible, unflinching, emotional look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a grueling timeline of the events in both cities in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months afterwards. There's a focus on the brutal, and often horrifyingly otherworldly, effects of the bombs—utilizing many, many hellish survivor stories—as well as exploring the ethics and justifications of the decision to use them.
Very well-written, thorough, and engrossing, and it's about an important subject very few people have written in any depth about.
Very well-written, thorough, and engrossing, and it's about an important subject very few people have written in any depth about.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Medical content, Violence, Body horror, Child death, Death, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Abandonment, Animal death, Grief, and Medical trauma
leanniefae's review against another edition
I'm hoping to pick this back up in future. It's too much for me right now.
a_wild_wyatt's review against another edition
5.0
This book should be required reading in all schools around the world.
greatlibraryofalexandra's review against another edition
4.0
Very disturbing read full of mostly first hand accounts from Hiroshima survivors. It’s very focused on what happened in the moment and in the hours and days after.
Pellegrino wastes no paper trying to justify the American reasoning for making this attack. He just focuses on the victims. It’s chilling, but I think very necessary. Perhaps the creators of this weapon didn’t know what it would do to human bodies and spirits, but now that we do, I think the obvious conclusion is that nuclear weapons should never be issued again.
There is some controversy surrounding this book (specifically, some of Pellegrino’s sources are called into question), and it’s worth reading up on it. This version was wished to account for his reevaluation of some of his (American) sources. The Japanese survivor accounts are recorded elsewhere and are sound - and frankly I think they are what matters.
Pellegrino wastes no paper trying to justify the American reasoning for making this attack. He just focuses on the victims. It’s chilling, but I think very necessary. Perhaps the creators of this weapon didn’t know what it would do to human bodies and spirits, but now that we do, I think the obvious conclusion is that nuclear weapons should never be issued again.
There is some controversy surrounding this book (specifically, some of Pellegrino’s sources are called into question), and it’s worth reading up on it. This version was wished to account for his reevaluation of some of his (American) sources. The Japanese survivor accounts are recorded elsewhere and are sound - and frankly I think they are what matters.
cloudss's review against another edition
dark
informative
medium-paced
4.75
epsyphus's review against another edition
Found it as an audiobook and I didn’t get very far into it when I looked at the “Overview” tab and found a note from the publishers saying questions had arisen regarding the accuracy of the sources and information so much so that while they would still make it available in this format, they would no longer be printing or shipping the book.
val_halla's review against another edition
5.0
An amazing book about the effects of two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. After all these years, there is still more to learn about the subject, and the author does a great job of compiling interviews and research to create a compelling narrative. I got tears in my eyes at some points!
thepickygirl's review against another edition
5.0
*I requested this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Today marks the type of anniversary some will celebrate and others will denigrate. Exactly 70 years ago today, the United States, in what some say was an effort to end the war and others claim was a way to justify the expense of scientific research, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.
My Pacific War reading inevitably led me here, but I knew I should not read anything regarding the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki without gaining a much broader understanding of what led humanity to this moment. Flyboys by James Bradley gave me a look at Japan's history and rise as a military power as well as the cruelty of the Japanese military to American pilots. The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan gave me an insider's view of the making of the bombs as well as the American ignorance of such raw power.
By the time I made it to Charles Pellegrino's To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima, I thought I was ready. He opens his book with this line: "Had Mary Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe been born into the mid-twentieth century, they would never have had to invent horror."
And then it begins. Pellegrino starts at the epicenter in Hiroshima, mixing science with humanity, breaking down what the bomb did to the humans below it as well as who those humans were and what they were likely doing, based on routine and the flash prints left behind where once men, women, and children stood.
He weaves survivor memory and testimony, illustrating the immediate chaos of the bomb's aftermath, describing the teacher whose face would be marked from the flash of the bomb, as a student held up her calligraphy on rice paper, creating the only barrier between her and the pika-don, or "flash-boom" as the Japanese termed it.
The first 50 pages of this book resulted in me gasping aloud again and again, shocked at the apocalyptic world it described and bookmarking information I'd never come across before and wanted to come back to.
First published in 2010, Pellegrino's book was recalled by the publisher when the New York Times uncovered false information - the book set forth, in part, that an American was killed and others irradiated, based on the testimony of a man who apparently lied about his involvement in the entire affair.
This publication, by Rowman & Littlefield, has no such testimony, and names and situations Pellegrino discusses have popped up in multiple books I've read on the topic.
All this to say, the book is not only compelling but a reliable and fascinating account of the survivors not just of Hiroshima, but of the men and women deemed "double survivors," those who left Hiroshima in time for the bombing in Nagasaki.
Pellegrino gives voice to their suffering, their sorrow, and their spirit of survival in what is, for me, required reading on the subject.
Today marks the type of anniversary some will celebrate and others will denigrate. Exactly 70 years ago today, the United States, in what some say was an effort to end the war and others claim was a way to justify the expense of scientific research, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.
My Pacific War reading inevitably led me here, but I knew I should not read anything regarding the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki without gaining a much broader understanding of what led humanity to this moment. Flyboys by James Bradley gave me a look at Japan's history and rise as a military power as well as the cruelty of the Japanese military to American pilots. The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan gave me an insider's view of the making of the bombs as well as the American ignorance of such raw power.
By the time I made it to Charles Pellegrino's To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima, I thought I was ready. He opens his book with this line: "Had Mary Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe been born into the mid-twentieth century, they would never have had to invent horror."
And then it begins. Pellegrino starts at the epicenter in Hiroshima, mixing science with humanity, breaking down what the bomb did to the humans below it as well as who those humans were and what they were likely doing, based on routine and the flash prints left behind where once men, women, and children stood.
He weaves survivor memory and testimony, illustrating the immediate chaos of the bomb's aftermath, describing the teacher whose face would be marked from the flash of the bomb, as a student held up her calligraphy on rice paper, creating the only barrier between her and the pika-don, or "flash-boom" as the Japanese termed it.
The first 50 pages of this book resulted in me gasping aloud again and again, shocked at the apocalyptic world it described and bookmarking information I'd never come across before and wanted to come back to.
First published in 2010, Pellegrino's book was recalled by the publisher when the New York Times uncovered false information - the book set forth, in part, that an American was killed and others irradiated, based on the testimony of a man who apparently lied about his involvement in the entire affair.
This publication, by Rowman & Littlefield, has no such testimony, and names and situations Pellegrino discusses have popped up in multiple books I've read on the topic.
All this to say, the book is not only compelling but a reliable and fascinating account of the survivors not just of Hiroshima, but of the men and women deemed "double survivors," those who left Hiroshima in time for the bombing in Nagasaki.
Pellegrino gives voice to their suffering, their sorrow, and their spirit of survival in what is, for me, required reading on the subject.
bmwpalmer's review against another edition
4.0
What an interesting book. I never realized I knew so little about what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though I've visited the former. This book is entirely an amalgamation of eyewitness accounts - there is very little filler narration. I never knew that so many eyewitness accounts even existed.
It was also interesting to learn that the old "hide under your desk in the event of a nuclear bombing" school drill actually has some merit. It really could save you.
However, at times it was a little too touch-feely. I would have liked to see some hard statistics about survival statistics vs. proximity to Ground Zero, and mortality later in life statistics. But who knows, maybe those stats don't really exist. And come to think of it, what was with the pencil drawings instead of photographs??
It was also interesting to learn that the old "hide under your desk in the event of a nuclear bombing" school drill actually has some merit. It really could save you.
However, at times it was a little too touch-feely. I would have liked to see some hard statistics about survival statistics vs. proximity to Ground Zero, and mortality later in life statistics. But who knows, maybe those stats don't really exist. And come to think of it, what was with the pencil drawings instead of photographs??