Last Train to Hiroshima - Hardcover

"Heart-stopping. Pellegrino dissects the complex political and military strategies that went into the atomic detonations and the untold suffering heaped on countless Japanese civilians, weaving all of the book's many elements into a wise, informed protest against any further use of these terrible weapons."--"Publishers Weekly," Starred Review "Sober and authoritative. . . . A firm, compelling synthesis of earlier memoirs and archival material, as well as of the author's own interviews and research. This is gleaming, popular wartime history, John Hersey infused with Richard Preston and a fleck of Michael Crichton."--Dwight Garner, "The New York Times" "The tragedies and atrocities of World War II now belong to history, while Hiroshima is still part of our world, our continuing present, maybe our dreaded future. "The Last Train from Hiroshima" reminds us why this is so. Charles Pellegrino's account of what it was actually

"Last Train from Hiroshima" offers readers a stunning 'you are there' time capsule, gracefully wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino's scientific authority and close relationship with the bomb's survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written. At the narrative's core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand - the Japanese civilians on the ground and the American flyers in the air. Thirty people are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki - where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of the cataclysm at ground zero both times. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell in which Yamaguchi had been standing, placing him and a few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection, while the entire building disappeared around them. Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the 'official report', showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and why.