John Hersey
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John Hersey, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1958 |
John Richard Hersey (
June 17,
1914 –
March 24,
1993) was an
American writer and
journalist. Born in
Tianjin,
China to
missionaries Roscoe and Grace Baird Hersey, his family returned to the United States when he was ten years old. Hersey attended the
Hotchkiss School, before
Yale and graduate study as a Mellon Fellow at
Cambridge. He obtained a summer job as a secretary for
Sinclair Lewis in the summer of 1937, and, that fall, started work at
Time. Two years later he was transferred to
Time's Chungking bureau. During
World War II he covered the fighting in both Europe (
Sicily) and Asia (
Battle of Guadalcanal), writing articles for
Time,
Life, and
The New Yorker.
Hersey's most notable work was a story for
The New Yorker, entitled "
Hiroshima," about the effects of the
atomic bomb dropped there on the 6th of August, in
1945. The article, which tells the story of six victims of the bombing, was later turned into a book. His article about the dullness of grammar school readers in a 1954 issue of
Time was the inspiration for
The Cat in the Hat. Hersey also wrote
The Algiers Motel Incident, about racist killings by the police during the
12th Street Riot in
Detroit, Michigan, in 1968, and
A Bell for Adano, which won the
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in
1945. Hersey is also known for his pseudo-chronicle,
The Single Pebble about a young American engineer traversing upstream
Yangtze.
Hersey was the Master of
Pierson College, one of the twelve
residential colleges at
Yale University, from
1965–
1970.
John Hersey died at home in Key West, Florida on March 24, 1993. He is survived by his wife Barbara, his five children, and six grandchildren.
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A Bell for Adano*
Hiroshima (published as a book in
1946)
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The Child Buyer (
1947)
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The Wall (
1950)
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The War Lover (
1959)
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White Lotus (
1965)
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Too Far To Walk (
1966)
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Under the Eye of the Storm (
1967)
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The Algiers Motel Incident (
1968)
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Letter to the Alumni (
1970)
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The Conspiracy: A Novel (
1972)
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My Petition For More Space (
1974)
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The Walnut Door (
1977)
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The Call (
1985)
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Blues (
1987)
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Antonietta (
1991)
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Key West Tales (
1993)
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"Hiroshima" by John Hersey*
John Hersey High School
