John Hersey

La crónica sobre seis supervivientes de Hiroshima que se convirtió en un gran clásico del periodismo. «Toda persona que sepa leer, debería leer este libro.»Saturday Review of Literature El verano de

''Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. Mr Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun.''

Un document d’excepció, atemporal i poderós, que ha esdevingut un clàssic, per primer cop en català. El 6 d’agost de 1945 Hiroshima va ser destruïda per la bomba atòmica. Un any després, John Hersey

El 6 de agosto de 1945 a las 08.15 una bomba atómica mató a cien mil personas en Hiroshima. Se inició así una era en la que las armas de destrucción masiva forzaban un nuevo orden mundial y se descubrian formas ineditas de sufrimiento humano. Un año despues Hersey, entonces corresponsal de guerra para la revista Time, narro al mundo, en un estilo ajeno a todo sensacionalismo, la historia de seis supervivientes antes, inmediatamente despues y en los meses siguientes a la catastrofe. Cuarenta años mas tarde, el autor regreso a Japon para averiguar que habia sido de cada uno de ellos y añadio un conmovedor capitulo final. Publicado primero en la revista New Yorker en forma de articulo, pronto se convirtio en un texto de referencia para el periodismo de investigacion y en un clasico de la literatura de guerra.

Neros secret police believe they have come on the first hints of a plot against the emperors life. Once promising and giftedfriend of poets, pupil of the great SenecaNero has now bloodied himself and grown fat on power, and he has turned his back on the men of intellect who used to be his chosen circle. He has driven Seneca into retirement. He has proscribed the writings of Lucan, Romes foremost poet. Crass, mediocre menthe military and the secret policenow have his ear and favor. While he and his court give themselves to dreamlike pleasures and fetes, the obsessed secret police close in on (or do they foment, or imagine?) the conspiracy of the men of letters

This is a tale of the sea, of two men and their wives on a sailboat, moving toward the heart of a great storm. It is an adventure story that carries four travelers on the yawl Harmony from Edgartown to Menemsha to Block Island and thence out into a huge, dark cone of uncertainty. In the modulating airs of the voyage four personalities emerge to work changes on each other. The two marriages seem to react to the barometer. As the drama of the storm gathers and breaks, themes are sounded of escape and confrontatoin, of illusion, of the "secret place" that every boat and every person harbors, of a meticulousness, a prudent attention to the details of life, which can blind a man to the whole of reality, and also of endurance, of instinctively courageous seamanship, and of strength that the strong may not know they possess even as they exert it. The skipper, a young doctor, follows his obsession to the terrible goal to which it must lead him at the moment wehn the calm eye of the storm looks down on the tiny boat in the violent sea. The four visions of the characters, which seem to have been focused on the one experience, reveal themselves as sharply at variance with each other, so that a final "truth" of the story has to be bargained out. And in the end that truth turns out to be an irony.

The President has given me permission to take a kind of voyage with himto watch him closely through a working week.I will be with him, most of the time, hour in and hour out. At 8:33 on a rainy Monday in March, 1975, John Hersey sits down on a straight cane-backed chair in the Oval Office to begin soaking up impressions of what happensin post-Watergate Washingtonat the center of American power. Through five and a half days, he will stay close to the President, observing him as he consults with his own staff, with members of Congress, with his Cabinet, with Rockefeller; watching him on the exercise bike, at the barbers, greeting Miss America: absorbing his confidences as he talks after dinner, in the private quarters of the White House, about his childhood and about his college years when it was difficult to make ends meet. Following the President, Hersey observes in detail all the important momentsas well as the incidental onesthat show what Gerald Ford is like on the job. In this extraordinary book he builds a brilliant and revealing portrait, letting the reader see Fords strengths and limitations. And so perceptively does Hersey draw significance from his observations that the insights seem to explode like time bombs. I have seen all week that it is not easy for Gerald Fordto make what he refers to, in the language of umpires, as a tough call. Yet once he has made such a decision, he does not agonizehe becomes convinced of its rightness and is stubborn in its defense. In reading The President, each of us emerges knowing more than ever before, not only about this imperturbable iron man, the first President we did not elect, but also about how the Presidency really operates. In John Herseys report we come to understandthe man, and the things that persuade him. And we come to sensehow good it would be if in some way he could speakgood listener that he isone-to-one with ordinary men and women, his constituents, from whom he has somehow drifted so far away.

Writing in a new and different mode, John Hersey, who has enriched us with such memorable novels as A Bell for Adanoand The Wall, now gives us his first collection of short stories. A superb and witty storyteller, he invents a variety of voices A boy remembers his childhood summer on the North China sea and the typhoon that punished the fire-and-brimstone preacher for the sin of pride. A scullery maid tells of the time she took her masters prize catch with her on a blind date. An apprentice on a lobster trawler is an uncomfortable witness to the humiliation of his captainknown to be the best lobstering skipper out of either Menemsha or New Bedford In the title story, Venus, an insouciant septuagenarian, recaptures in a dazzling tone-perfect recitation the world of the rich and spoiled Lost Generation as she and her Michelangelic husband are adventuring in Willa Cather land and indulge in what turns out to be their last fling In these beautifully crafted stories Hersey proves himself to be a master of the form, and his eleven tales will delight all who love a good short story.

In Here to StayJohn Hersey tells of episodes in the past twenty years in which Man has courageously risen above desperate situations and shown his determination to survive despite the threats of the nuclear age. Mr. Hersey first tells the story of an old lady marooned on a rooftop amidst floods caused by a hurricane. He ends with his famous Hiroshima, the story of the survivors of the first atomic bombing, written from personal investigation, with horrifying detail and compassionate indignation. Between these two pieces we read of John Kennedys heroism in rescuing the crew of his PT boat, sunk by the Japanese, seventeen years before he became President; a Jews suffering in Auschwitz; a crippled G.I.s difficulties in adjusting himself to civilian life; the rehabilitation of a soldier paralyzed with fright; the adventures of two Poles who survived persecution; and a most moving account of an escape from Hungary in 1956. All John Herseys books have had a serious purpose. A Bell for Adanodrew attention to Italys plight; The Wall studied the Polish Jews struggle against tyranny; The War Lover exposed the war mentality;The Child Buyershowed up the exploitation of talent. Here to Stayis a stirring reminder of our inherent ability to meet the challenge of extinction which now faces the world.

This collectionharvest of a lifetime of brilliant reportage and reflectionbrings together the most memorable biographical pieces John Hersey has written over the past fifty years. His subjects range from Sinclair Lewis, for whom the twenty-three-year-old Hersey was secretary, and the young John F. Kennedy as he related to Hersey the dramatic story of PT 109, to Private John Daniel Ramey and his efforts to overcome illiteracy with the help of the U.S. Army, and Jessica Kelley, an elderly widow trapped in a buckling tenement as the 1955 Connecticut floods raged outside. Whether describing a brisk morning stroll with President Truman or hours spent fishing for blues with Lillian Hellman, recounting Benjamin Weintraubs harrowing escape from a Nazi death camp or Varsell Pleass dangerous struggle for voting rights in the Mississippi of 1964, Hersey brings us face to face with some of the extraordinary events and people of the past half century. And it is with his profoundly curious and sympathetic mind and unsurpassed journalistic eloquence that he brings each startlingly to life. The skill that won Hersey a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 is more than evident . . . an important collection of lives and their lessons. The New York Times Book Review Any reader not already a fan of Herseys will be swayed by the richness of this collection. Herseys legion of admirers will merely be gratified and moved again and again. . . The cumulative force of these essays is amazing. Kirkus Reviews

Is there anywhere a young man so dull he would not sell his soul for experience? In this striking new novel, quite different from anythign he has written before, John Hersey probes deeply, but with rich humor, into the aimlessness, boredom, and rebellion of a group of undergraduates in a New Englad college. In one of his remarkable insights into the problems of our times, he identifies their search for "breakthrough"intense sensory experience of every kindwith the Faustian pursuit of illusion. John Fist was a talented over-achiever in his first year at Sheldon. But then he suddently lost his drive, his sense of purpose and identity. One of his friends promises him all the extreme experiences of modern life: love, war, orgy, beachcombing, povery, sex, protests (and protests against protests), and total "freedom." First there is Margaret, simple, open, affectionate. But Fist is restless and breaks with her after a marvelously funny and touching night in a motel. Then there is Mona, the bright, high-class whore who somehow knows quite a lot about how professors talk. Fist takes her home to his middle-class parents, and the masquerade turns into one of the most hilarious and yet moving scenes in the book. Even the devastating release of LSD is powerless to help Fist, who finally realizes that identity cannot come to him artificially, through any escape, drug, or indulgence, but must be dredged up from deep within. Thus John Fist becomes a man. And thus ends a rich and moving and distinguished novel about some very real contemporaries.

From the revered Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer, comes his National Bestseller on one of the worlds oldest and most popular activities, fishing. Presented in narrative form as a conversation between a Fisherman and the Stranger, Hersey draws upon his own experiences and passion as the fisherman reflects on the age old sport, offering his own insights and thoughts. From the depths of the ocean to the creatures near the shore, Hersey perfectly answers why fishing has been such an integral part of humanity. Almost no one has answered why fish? better than Mr. Hersey . . . what he does best of all is evoke wonder.New York Times Book ReviewBlues is, of course, about much more than the pleasures and techniqu3es of fishing; it is, as Fisherman tells Stranger, about interconnectionsthe ties between mankind and the natural world, among others.The New YorkerWonderful . . . He gives us a rich and vivid sense of ocean life. . . . The whole thing is as stately as a minuet, and as graceful.Chicago Sun-Times

Writing at the height of his powers, John Hersey has created a taut, dazzling novel of suspense and revelationin which we watch, mesmerized, the fateful convergence of two lives. A young woman, having fled from her suddenly unbearable college kid selfand from the place, even the lover, that were part of itcomes alone to a strange city, anxiously waiting for something new and important to begin. A manbreezy, ponytailed, beautifulstranded by the passing of the sixties whose excitements had nurtured and consumed him, now lavishes his whole self on loving craftsmanship, on the construction of simple, perfect wooden doors, on the mystery of locks, and on the artful offering of security (his locks and doors) to women who are alone. The meeting of these two, and their love affairits choreography masterminded by one, unsuspected by the otherare hypnotically told in a novel that illumines the fearful and the fear-makers in our decade.

A street in New Haven. A line of people, blocks long, more closely packed than the rush-hour subways of the good old times. Poynter has been on the line since before dawn, as are thousands of others, pressed together, waiting their turns at the window to present their individual petitions. His is for more spacea notion so preposterous that when it is discovered it shocks, reverberates down the line, almost triggering violent reactions. In front of Poynter, so tightly jammed against him that he can see no more than the side of her face, is a girl petitioning to change her job. And, locked together in this fearful proximity, they talk, explore their predicaments, and perhaps fall in love. My Petition for More Space chills by its glimpse of a world grown so crowded that dissent is an inconceivable crime and acquiescence the law of survival. Feelings of hope and fear, desire, anger, frustration erupt sporadically, sparked by the friction of numbers. Call it tonights disturbing dream or a coldly logical scenario of things to come, John Herseys taut novel stings the mind.

A young American engineer sent to China to inspect the unruly Yangtze River travels up through the rivers gorges searching for dam sites. Pulled on a junk hauled by forty-odd trackers, he is carried, too, into the settled, ancient way of life of the people of the Yangtze -- until the interplay of his life with theirs comes to a dramatic climax.

Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Herseys novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty -- a gripping and visceral story, impossible to put down.

A saga of a magnificent violin, Antonietta, named after a beautiful woman who was the inspiration of Antonio Stradivaris later years. As Hersey brings Mozart, Berlioz, and Stravinsky to life, he offers us a marvelous celebration of the changing character and eternal art and power of music.