Nagasaki
Life After Nuclear War

But the city as she had known it no longer existed. All around, thick layers of splintered glass, metal dust, and twisted wire covered the ground, along with scorched corpses staring upward or facing down as though sleeping. Hundreds of men, women, and teenaged students who had climbed out of the fa......more

The signature line of one of the atomic bomb survivors, who participated in educating youth about the bombing, whose life is one of the five main survivors’ lives followed in this account says a lot of what needs to be said: “The basis of peace is for people to understand the pain of others.” With al......more

The author of this pretty amazing book, Susan Southard, spent twelve years in the researching and writing and was a student of mine in the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. Susan told me she started the MFA because she knew she needed more skills in order to write about Nagasaki. Tha......more

Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War is a haunting account of the second atomic bomb to fall on a civilian populace. As the title implies, this book goes far beyond the events of August 9, 1945, though it is in the initial weeks and months after the bombing that the story of Nagasaki is most gripping. S......more

Summary: This was a difficult book to read, but incredibly well written and worthwhile. I hoped to write a review of this book on August 9th, the 70th anniversary of the day an atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Unfortunately, life interfered, but this horrific event still deserves to b......more