What BOOK are you reading right now?

@oralloy,

Each National Lab has large historical accounts of all forms of energy in te world and US. They all have especially complete librries and collections of nuclear science and its varies uses and misuses. They employ historians and industrial archaeologists and weapons specialists.
What I was amazed at were the personal accounts of the first A bomb from the viictims POV, in just one short work. It was chilling and uplifting at the same time. It spoke in unpolished prose mostly of the resiliance of the human spirit. I sent the book down to a colleague who is an Industrial Archaeologist and a scholar of the documented and classified sites of the Manhattan Project ,(or as it was first called) the stories of which would improve your understanding about having "better things to do with ones time".

Much of the stuff you buy or think you know about Manhattan is sanitized Bullshit , cleaned up so folks in the US wouldnt freak out

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1 Reply

@Rebelofnj,

Quote:

Hiroshima by John Hersey is more about the horrors of nuclear war and less about fearing American retribution. Especially as other countries now have the ability to produce nuclear bombs.

Ollie thinks he;s a nuke scholar.Even His A2k handle is a 1940's term from one of the many National Labs associated with Manhattan. Youre right Hersey's book was a witness and a reflection. It was a very limited production I later found .It was witness, Horror followed by uplifting reflection on a single act in a long war.

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@farmerman,

He’s a sadist who fantasises about torturing and murdering those who don’t agree with him.

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@izzythepush,

Everything that you said about me is completely untrue. You make it sound like I'm a progressive.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Ollie thinks he's a nuke scholar.

Well, I know more about nukes than you know about everything. So there's that.

farmerman wrote:

It was a very limited production I later found.

Actually the book is very widely published and very widely read.

It's probably read by 99% of all American high school students. Note BillW's post on the previous page where he talked of doing a book report on it in 1962.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Much of the stuff you buy or think you know about Manhattan is sanitized Bullshit, cleaned up so folks in the US wouldnt freak out.

Spare me the "secret knowledge" nonsense. It may impress people who don't know any better. But to those of us who do know better, it just makes you look silly.

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@oralloy,

I'm not sure Hiroshima is that widely read. According to Goodreads, it was rated by 60,000 users, which is not bad (decent readership, actually).

But compared to other perennial high school books, it is not widely read: Moby Dick, 478,000; To Kill a Mockingbird, 4 million; Frankenstein, 1 million; The Scarlet Letter, 704,000.

If I may, I would like to recommend Swan Song by Robert McCammon. It is about a group of survivors struggling to live in the aftermath of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. It is often compared to The Stand by Stephen King, another book about the end of the world.

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@Rebelofnj,

Level 7 isn’t bad it’s Ukrainian, written from the point of view of a soldier living in the 7th level of a nuclear bunker. It’s not got a happy ending.

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@Rebelofnj,

James Morrow's Nebula Finalist novel, This Is the Way the World Ends is bleak yet funny and very moving.

Quote:

The Gulliver’s Travels of the nuclear age, the Alice in Wonderland of the arms race, this mordantly funny and visionary tale of the apocalypse was a Nebula finalist. The trouble starts when George Paxton ingenuously signs an admission of complicity in starting World War III.

He's a great writer of satire and nuanced fantasy/science fiction novels.

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Been reading and reading and knitting and reading. (And swimming in the summer) just polished off https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40191.Chasing_Cezanne in one sitting. Fun and fast

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Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York — Whitehead's use of language is something like verbal alchemy. Seems there's a sentence in every paragraph that I find myself reading over a few times and breaking into a sly smile.

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@Rebelofnj,

Hiroshima is a very short and highly aimed book about nuclear war absent all jingoism or manufactured reasons for dropping the bomb.

PS, the book was published in 1946 . It was originally a one year anniversary issue of the New Yorker, in which Hiroshima was the entire issue. I read the Swan Song, and Stand . None cam close to affecting me like Hiroshima. Hiroshima was a factual recollection by six .individuals , all survivors.

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@farmerman,

It was an assigned reading when I was in school for one of my classes.

Yeah even as a kid it impacted me. I still remember parts of this book.

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@Linkat,

I did a book report on it too. Early high school I think. Maybe ninth grade.

What I took from the book was quite different that what you guys all took from it. I used the reports of the witnesses to assess the effectiveness of the weapon.

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Saw the movie Motherless Brooklyn...decided to read the book.

Not finished with it yet, but it is a masterpiece. I have no trouble recommending it for a read.

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@farmerman,

Here is the book I still have in my library on the effect of nuclear weapons the first issue being released in the very early 1960s. It was aim mainly at the civil defense community.

I can still remember referring to it as a teenager during the Cuba missiles crisis while living in NJ.

Quote:

The effects of nuclear weapons

Author: Samuel Glasstone; United States. Defense Atomic Support Agency,
Publisher: Washington : U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1962.
Edition/Format: Print book : National government publication : English : Revised editionView all editions and formats
Rating:
(not yet rated) 0 with reviews - Be the first.
Subjects
Atomic bomb.
Radiation.
Nuclear Warfare.
View all subjects

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https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51DosgPyxdL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

This is the book I read about 9 people who survived the bombing at Nagasaki and then traveled to Hiroshima and survived the bombing there. I was in about 6th or 7th grade at the time and wrote a book report. If yoh would like to read a review of the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Who-Survived-Hiroshima-Nagasaki/dp/B001JUY3FI

One person lived until 2010 when died at 93 years old.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi

1 Reply

@BillW,

BillW wrote:

This is the book I read about 9 people who survived the bombing at Nagasaki and then traveled to Hiroshima and survived the bombing there. I was in about 6th or 7th grade at the time and wrote a book report.

Did any of them learn to not commit genocide and war atrocities anymore?

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@Frank Apisa,

Just downloaded it on my nook - was looking for a book to read - thanks

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@oralloy,

Did the U.S.A. ever learn those things?

1 Reply

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