When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 100,000 men women and children, a new era in human history opened. Written a mere year after the disaster, this work offers a heart rending account of six men and women who survived despite all the odds. Forty years later, John Hersey returned to Hiroshima to discover how the same six people had struggled to cope with catastrophe and with often crippling disease. His long new chapter, which also considers the dramatic proliferation of nuclear weaponry since the war, provides a devastating picture of the long term effects of one very small bomb.