The atomic bombing of Hiroshima, like almost any major event in WWII, is almost too huge, terrible, and earth shaking, to really wrap your head around. You can read all about the how the atom bomb worked, how people and buildings were vaporized instantly, how even years after the effects of radiation lingered, without fully grasping the enormity of it.

Journalist John Hersey tries to overcome this by keeping his focus extremely tight, just following the lives of six survivors and telling the events and aftermath of the bombing from their perspectives. Hersey largely succeeds and his reporting has a gravity and a humanity to it that more impersonal books about the atomic bombings lack.