Ghosts of Hiroshima

nFrom the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Her Name, Titanicn nSOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING FILMMAKER JAMES CAMERONn nFor all humanity, it was, literally and figuratively, childhood's end.n nNo one recognized the flashes of bright light that filled the sky. Survivors described colors they couldn't name. The blast wave that followed seemed to strike with no sound. In that silence came the dawn of atomic death for two hundred thousand souls.n nOn August 6, 1945, twenty-nine-year-old naval engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi was on the last day of a business trip, looking forward to returning home to his wife and infant son, when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He survived the atomic blast and got on a train to Nagasaki, only to be bombed again.n nJacob Beser, a Manhattan Project engineer, looked down on Hiroshima and saw the ground boiling. He refused to look at Nagasaki at all. Years afterward, he referred to what he witnessed as the most bizarre and spectacular two events in the history of man's inhumanity to man.n nFrom that first millionth of a second, people began to die in previously unimaginable ways. Near Hiroshima's hypocenter, teeth were scattered on the ground, speckles of incandescent blood were converted to carbon steel, a child's marbles melted to blobs of molten glass.n nFrom the bombs were born radioactive substances that mimicked calcium in growing bones and which, ten years later, filled hospitals with a shocking truth: nuclear weapons, more than anything else, were child-killers.n nBased on years of forensic archaeology combined with interviews of more than two hundred survivors and their families, Ghosts of Hiroshima is a you-are-there account of ordinary human beings thrust into extraordinary events, during which our modern civilization entered its most challenging phase--a nuclear adolescence that, unless we are very wise and learn from our past, we may not survive.n