Hiroshima is a 1946 book by American author John Hersey. It tells the stories of six survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It is regarded as one of the earliest examples of New Journalism, in which the story-telling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reporting. The work was originally published in The New Yorker, which had planned to run it over four issues but instead dedicated the entire edition of August 31, 1946, to a single article. Less than two months later, the article was printed as a book by Alfred A. Knopf. Never out of print, it has sold more than three million copies. "Its story became a part of our ceaseless thinking about world wars and nuclear holocaust," New Yorker essayist Roger Angell wrote in 1995. Background Before writing Hiroshima, Hersey had been a war correspondent in the field, writing for Life magazine and The New Yorker. He followed troops during the invasions of Italy and Sicily during World War II. In 1944, Hersey began working in the Pacific Theater and followed Lt. John F. Kennedy through the Solomon Islands. One of the first Western journalists to view the ruins of Hiroshima after the bombing, Hersey was commissioned by William Shawn of The New Yorker to write articles about the impact of a nuclear explosion by using witness accounts, a subject virtually untouched by journalists. Hersey interviewed many witnesses; he focused his article on six in particular. Publication in The New Yorker The issue of August 31, 1946, arrived in subscribers' mailboxes bearing a light-hearted cover of a summer picnic in a park. There was no hint what was inside. Hersey's article began where the magazine's regular "Talk of the Town" column usually began, immediately after the theater listings. At the bottom of the page, the editors appended a short note: "TO OUR READERS. The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use. The Editors." One of the few people other than the principal editors of The New Yorker tipped to the forthcoming