
Hiroshima
The Last Witnesses (Embers, Book 1)
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Narrated by:
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Brian Nishii
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By:
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M. G. Sheftall
About this listen
One of Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction From 2024
The first volume in a two-book series about each of the atomic bomb drops that ended the Pacific War based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors to tell a story of devastation and resilience
In this vividly rendered historical narrative, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-minute report of August 6, 1945, in the leadup and aftermath of the world-changing bombing mission of Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay, and Little Boy. These survivors and witnesses, who now have an average age over ninety years old, are quite literally the last people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the bombings, tell us what they experienced on the day those cities were obliterated, and give us some appreciation of what it has entailed to live with those memories and scars during the subsequent seventy-plus years.
Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who lived well into the twenty-first century, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens’ lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, and years afterward. He stands out among historians due to his fluency in spoken and written Japanese, and his longtime immersion in Japanese society that has allowed him, a white American, the unheard-of access to these atomic bomb survivors in the waning years of their lives. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories.
Hiroshima should be required listening for the modern age. The personal accounts it contains will serve as cautionary tales about the horror and insanity of nuclear warfare, reminding them—it is hoped—that the world still lives with this danger at our doorstep.
©2024 M. G. Sheftall (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“For those who want to understand what happened underneath the mushroom cloud—and shouldn’t we all?—Sheftall’s sweeping, sensitive and deeply researched book is required reading for our human hearts.”—Washington Post
“Painful in substance but lyrical in form, Hiroshima should be required reading for political leaders, those interested in war and peace, and anyone who has grown numb to the specific horrors of World War II.”—BookPage (starred)
“A sweeping and vivid account of the bombing and its aftermath. [Sheftall is] an ideal Virgil for such a nightmarish journey.”—Wall Street Journal
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Overall
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Wings of War is the incredible true story of the P-51 Mustang fighter and the unlikely crew of designers, engineers, test pilots, and army officers who brought it from the drafting table to the skies over World War II. This is hardly a straightforward tale of building an airplane—for years, the team was stymied by corruption within the defense industry and stonewalled by the Army Air Forces, who failed to understand the Mustang’s potential.
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Disappointed
- By David Kocol on 06-22-23
By: David Fairbank White, and others
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God Save Benedict Arnold
- The True Story of America's Most Hated Man
- By: Jack Kelly
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Benedict Arnold committed treason—for more than two centuries, that's all that most Americans have known about him. Yet Arnold was much more than a turncoat—his achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era. God Save Benedict Arnold tells the gripping story of Arnold's rush of audacious feats—his capture of Fort Ticonderoga, his Maine mountain expedition to attack Quebec, the famous artillery brawl at Valcour Island, the turning-point battle at Saratoga—that laid the groundwork for our independence.
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Missing the Whole Story
- By Derek L. on 08-14-24
By: Jack Kelly
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Hitler
- A Global Biography
- By: Brendan Simms
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 29 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Hitler offers a deeply learned and radically revisionist biography, arguing that the dictator's main strategic enemy, from the start of his political career in the 1920s, was not communism or the Soviet Union, but capitalism and the United States. Whereas most historians have argued that Hitler underestimated the American threat, Simms shows that Hitler embarked on a preemptive war with the United States precisely because he considered it such a potent adversary.
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A good biography with a different viewpoint
- By Timothy on 10-10-19
By: Brendan Simms
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The King's Assassin
- The Secret Plot to Murder King James I
- By: Benjamin Woolley
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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An absorbing account of the conspiracy to kill King James I by his handsome lover, the duke of Buckingham, a historical crime that has remained hidden for 400 years....
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Wonderful read!
- By LaDonna on 10-26-24
By: Benjamin Woolley
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Crossing the Borders of Time
- A True Story of War, Exile, and Love Reclaimed
- By: Leslie Maitland
- Narrated by: Leslie Maitland
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Leslie Maitland is an award-winning former New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where, as Jews, they spent four years as refugees—the last two under risk of Nazi deportation. In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed the harbors. Then, barred from entering the United States, they lived in Cuba for almost two years before immigrating to New York.
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I didn't want it to end..absolutely wonderful!
- By Ellen on 05-07-12
By: Leslie Maitland
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Descent into Darkness
- Pearl Harbor, 1941, A Navy Diver's Memoir
- By: Edward C. Raymer
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. Their two-part orders are direct and straightforward: (1) rescue as many trapped sailors and Marines as possible, and (2) resurrect what remains of America's once mighty pacific fleet. Descent Into Darkness tells their story.
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A Massive Disappointment
- By Matthew on 10-14-15
By: Edward C. Raymer
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Eagle Against the Sun
- The American War With Japan
- By: Ronald H. Spector
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 23 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and offers some provocative interpretations. He shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was less a product of strategic calculation and more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition.
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OK as an overview, but too little detail
- By Mike From Mesa on 03-21-22
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Resistance
- The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945
- By: Halik Kochanski
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 46 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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It's almost shocking to think that now, more than seventy years after the Nazi surrender in 1945, there is not a single volume that has attempted to unify the resistance movements that convulsed Europe during the brutal years of occupation. In her extraordinary work, Resistance, Halik Kochanski does just that, creating a prodigiously researched account that becomes the first to bring these disparate histories into a single narrative.
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Uneven in quality of depiction of various areas
- By K. T. Jukic on 05-17-23
By: Halik Kochanski
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A Woman in Berlin
- Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary
- By: Anonymous, Philip Boehm - translator
- Narrated by: Isabel Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject—the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.
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Interesting
- By northwoods woman on 06-25-20
By: Anonymous, and others
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Operation Pineapple Express
- By: Scott Mann
- Narrated by: Lt. Col. Scott Mann
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban.
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amazing, uplifting, heart wrenching
- By Lisa L. Weinley on 09-13-22
By: Scott Mann
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Luck of the Draw
- My Story of the Air War in Europe
- By: Frank Murphy, Chloe Melas, Elizabeth Murphy
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Murphy, Jonas Moore, Chloe Melas
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Beginning on August 17, 1942, American heavy bomber crews of the Eighth Air Force took off for combat in the hostile skies over occupied Europe. The final price was staggering. 4,300 B-17s and B-24s failed to return; nearly 21,000 men were taken prisoner or interned in a neutral country, and a further 17,650 made the ultimate sacrifice. Luck of the Draw is more than a war story. It’s the incredible, inspiring story of Frank Murphy, one of the few survivors from the 100th Bombardment Group, who cheated death for months in a German POW camp.
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Personal Accounting that the Narrator Destroyed
- By David Sajben on 03-09-23
By: Frank Murphy, and others
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Checkmate in Berlin
- The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World
- By: Giles Milton
- Narrated by: Giles Milton
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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From a master of popular history, the lively, immersive story of the race to seize Berlin in the aftermath of World War II as it’s never been told before.
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Excellent history of the early days of the Cold War
- By Matt on 08-28-21
By: Giles Milton
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The Holocaust
- An Unfinished History
- By: Dan Stone
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked. Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone—Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London—reveals how the idea of “industrial murder” is incomplete: many were killed where they lived in the most brutal of ways.
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One of the best NF books I've ever listened to
- By Aaron.Johnson on 02-23-24
By: Dan Stone
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Into the Cold Blue
- My World War II Journeys with the Mighty Eighth Air Force
- By: John Homan, Jared Frederick - contributor
- Narrated by: Eric Torres
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A born daredevil, John Homan joined the Army Air Forces after the Pearl Harbor attack. By 1944, he was co-piloting a B-24 Liberator over Nazi Germany, raining death and destruction on the enemy. This first-person account of his harrowing missions—chronicling deadly flights through skies of red-hot flak bursts and airmen bailing out with parachutes aflame—will leave listeners staggered by the determination and grit of World War II aviators.
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My Father Journey
- By Charlie on 08-24-24
By: John Homan, and others
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Plentiful Country
- The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: David McCusker
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland.
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Changing Perceptions on Immigrants
- By Janet V. Payne on 05-07-24
By: Tyler Anbinder
What listeners say about Hiroshima
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- JK
- 04-29-25
EXCELLENT
This is a book which I highly recommend.
It is my hope that atomic weapons should never be used again.
This coming from a survivor of a Japanese concentration camp in former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.
I was four years old when WW2 started.
I have always carried such hatred towards Japan, but now towards the end of my life and having studied world history extensively, I just take it all in stride.
I am looking forward to listening to book number 2, soon to be available.
There is another audible book I highly recommend: “Hiroshima Dairy”, the journal of a Japanese physician,
August 6-September 30, 1945.
The narrator, mr. Brian Nishii, is the only one who can do justice to this book.
My thanks to all involved, JK.
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- William hartel
- 12-08-24
Completenesss
Detail of the witnesses of a disaster so many years ago. The horrific details of injuries and trauma experienced
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- Diva DiDi
- 12-02-24
Hiroshima
I read John Hersey’s Hiroshima and it was different because he wrote it right after the war. This book is more detailed and it explains the experiences of the Hibakusha. I learned a lot.
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