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On 31 August 1946 The New Yorker gave almost an entire issue to one article for the first time: 31,000 words by John Hersey on six people who survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Hersey, born in Tianjin, China, in 1914 to missionary parents, had spent the war as a correspondent for Time and Life, survived four plane crashes and already won the Pulitzer Prize for a novel, A Bell for Adano. In 1999 a panel linked to New York University’s journalism department named “Hiroshima” the finest American journalism of the twentieth century. He went on to write novels about the Warsaw Ghetto, a bomber crew and China, and a book on a police killing in Detroit. This guide covers his ten key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1943–1987 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
John Hersey published 26 books between 1942 and 1994. His best-known are Hiroshima (1946), A Bell for Adano (1944), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and The Wall (1950), a novel of the Warsaw Ghetto. Start with Hiroshima: it is short, and it set the pattern for everything he did afterwards, telling a catastrophe through a few ordinary people.
Where to Start with John Hersey
If you want his defining book
→ Hiroshima (1946) — six survivors of the atomic bomb, hour by hour.
If you want the Pulitzer-winning novel
→ A Bell for Adano (1944) — an American officer governing a Sicilian town in 1943.
If you want his most ambitious novel
→ The Wall (1950) — the Warsaw Ghetto told through one man’s archive.
If you want his reporting on America
→ The Algiers Motel Incident (1968) — three deaths during the Detroit riot of 1967.
10 John Hersey Books, in Order
Into the Valley
A short account, about 20,000 words, of a company of US Marines in a jungle fight on Guadalcanal in 1942, which Hersey went through with them as a Time correspondent. Knopf published it about four months after the events. It was reissued in 2002 as Into the Valley: Marines at Guadalcanal.
A Bell for Adano
Major Victor Joppolo, an Italian-American officer, governs the Sicilian town of Adano after the Allied invasion and tries to replace its 700-year-old bell, taken away to be melted down for weapons. He wins the town’s trust and is removed for disobeying an order that would have cut off its mule carts. Joppolo was based on Frank Toscani, military governor of Licata. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, ran on Broadway with Fredric March and was filmed in 1945 by Henry King.
Hiroshima
The bombing of 6 August 1945 and the days after it, told through six survivors: the clerk Toshiko Sasaki, the doctors Masakazu Fujii and Terufumi Sasaki, the widow Hatsuyo Nakamura, the German Jesuit Wilhelm Kleinsorge and the Methodist minister Kiyoshi Tanimoto. Hersey said he took the interwoven structure from Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It ran in The New Yorker on 31 August 1946 and appeared as a book from Knopf the same year. In 1985 he went back and added a final chapter, “The Aftermath”, on what had become of the six.
The Wall
The Warsaw Ghetto from its creation in November 1939 to the uprising of 1943, told through the archive of Noach Levinson, a fictional historian modelled on Emanuel Ringelblum, who buried the ghetto’s records. Hersey first drafted it with an all-knowing narrator, then rewrote it as Levinson’s notes. It was a bestseller and won the National Jewish Book Award, and it appeared before the English translation of Anne Frank’s diary.
A Single Pebble
A young American engineer travels up the Yangtze on a junk hauled by trackers, looking for a site for a dam, and slowly understands how little his plans mean to the people who live on the river. It drew on the China of Hersey’s childhood and won the National Association of Independent Schools Award in 1957.
The War Lover
A B-17 bomber crew flying from England in 1943, seen by the co-pilot, Charles Boman, who comes to understand that his pilot, the brilliant Buzz Marrow, loves killing more than anything else. The 1962 film directed by Philip Leacock, with Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner, loosely adapted it and changed the characters’ names.
The Child Buyer
A satire told as the transcript of a state senate hearing: a corporate agent has come to a small town to buy a gifted ten-year-old boy, and the town’s officials are tempted to sell. Paul Shyre adapted it for the stage in 1964.
The Algiers Motel Incident
On 25 July 1967, during the Detroit riot, police and National Guardsmen raided the Algiers Motel annex looking for a sniper; three Black teenagers, Carl Cooper, Fred Temple and Aubrey Pollard, were killed. Hersey interviewed survivors, families and officers within months and published the book while the cases were still open. No one was convicted. Kathryn Bigelow’s film Detroit (2017) dramatised the same events.
The Call
The life of David Treadup, an American missionary who goes to China in the early twentieth century and stays for decades, told largely through his journals and letters. Hersey drew on his own parents’ work as missionaries in Tianjin.
Blues
A series of conversations between a “Fisherman” and a “Stranger” while fishing for bluefish off Martha’s Vineyard, about the fish, the sea and how to live, in the manner of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler.
In What Order to Read John Hersey
Hersey wrote no series, so the order is yours. Publication order follows his life, though: the war reporting and war novels of the 1940s and 1950s, the angrier American books of the 1960s, and late books that go back to China, where he was born, and to the coast where he spent his summers.
If you read only two, read Hiroshima and The Wall together: one is reporting, one is a novel built like a document, and they show the same method from both sides. The 1985 editions of Hiroshima include “The Aftermath”; make sure yours does.
A reading path
1. Hiroshima (1946)
2. A Bell for Adano (1944)
3. The Wall (1950)
4. The Algiers Motel Incident (1968)
5. The Call (1985)
Everything Else John Hersey Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 16 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Reporting and essays
6
6 books · 1942–1989
- 1942Men on Bataanhis first book, on the defence of the Philippines, built from correspondents’ dispatches
- 1963Here to Staystudies of people who survived disasters
- 1970Letter to the Alumnion Yale, student protest and the New Haven Black Panther trial
- 1975The Presidenta portrait of Gerald Ford at work
- 1980Aspects of the PresidencyTruman and Ford in office
- 1989Life Sketchesprofiles and memoir pieces
Novels and stories
10
10 books · 1953–1994
- 1953The Marmot Drivenovel
- 1965White Lotusnovel in which white Americans are enslaved by a victorious China
- 1966Too Far to Walknovel of a college student
- 1967Under the Eye of the Stormnovel
- 1972The Conspiracynovel set in Nero’s Rome
- 1974My Petition for More Spacenovel
- 1977The Walnut Doornovel
- 1990Fling and Other Storiesstories
- 1991Antoniettanovel following a violin through the centuries
- 1994Key West Talesstories, published after his death
The years · 1914–1993
Quick facts about John Hersey
- Known for
- John Hersey is known for “Hiroshima” (1946), the account of six survivors of the atomic bomb that a 1999 panel named the finest American journalism of the twentieth century.
- 1914
- Born in Tianjin, China, to missionary parents
- 1937
- Joins Time
- 1946
- Hiroshima
- 1965
- Master of Pierson College, Yale
- 1985
- Adds “The Aftermath” to Hiroshima
- 1993
- Dies in Key West, Florida
- Born
- 17 June 1914, Tianjin, China; his parents were YMCA missionaries
- Education
- Yale (BA 1936); Clare College, Cambridge
- Worked
- Time and Life, 1937–1946, then The New Yorker
- Prize
- Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, 1945, for A Bell for Adano
- Yale
- Master of Pierson College, 1965–1970; taught writing for 18 years
- Married
- Frances Ann Cannon (1940); Barbara Day Addams (1959)
- Died
- 24 March 1993, Key West, Florida
The red mark is 1946: “Hiroshima”, published in The New Yorker and then as a book.
How John Hersey Writes: The Catastrophe Through a Few People
Hersey’s method was to tell an event too large to grasp through a handful of people who lived through it. In “Hiroshima” he decided early to use only people who had been physically hit by the bomb, followed six of them hour by hour, and borrowed the interwoven structure from Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Into the Valley does the same with one company of Marines, The Algiers Motel Incident with one night in Detroit.
He keeps himself out of the frame and his prose flat, with few adjectives and no commentary, and lets the facts do the work. In 1949, in “The Novel of Contemporary History” for The Atlantic, he argued that fiction could sometimes carry the truth of an event better than reporting, which is how he approached The Wall: a novel built to read like a recovered archive.
Although he is counted among the forerunners of New Journalism, he often criticised its later practitioners for being careless with facts. His own record has been questioned too: Anne Fadiman has accused him of using other writers’ work without credit.
Frequently asked questions about John Hersey’s books
How many books has John Hersey written?
Twenty-six under his own name, published between 1942 and 1994, the last after his death. Ten are the key books on this page, from Into the Valley (1943) to Blues (1987); the other sixteen are listed below them.
What are John Hersey’s books in order?
The key books are Into the Valley (1943), A Bell for Adano (1944), Hiroshima (1946), The Wall (1950), A Single Pebble (1956), The War Lover (1959), The Child Buyer (1960), The Algiers Motel Incident (1968), The Call (1985) and Blues (1987).
Where should I start with John Hersey?
Hiroshima. It is short, it is his most important work, and it shows the method he used in almost everything else. If you prefer fiction, start with A Bell for Adano.
What is John Hersey’s most famous book?
Hiroshima (1946), first published as a single article that filled almost the whole New Yorker of 31 August 1946. In 1999 a panel linked to New York University’s journalism department named it the finest American journalism of the twentieth century.
Is Hiroshima a true story?
Yes. The six people in it are real survivors whom Hersey interviewed in Hiroshima in 1946: Toshiko Sasaki, Masakazu Fujii, Terufumi Sasaki, Hatsuyo Nakamura, Wilhelm Kleinsorge and Kiyoshi Tanimoto. In 1985 he added a chapter, “The Aftermath”, on their later lives.
Did John Hersey win the Pulitzer Prize?
Yes, the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1945, for A Bell for Adano. The Wall won the National Jewish Book Award in 1950.
Which John Hersey books have been adapted?
A Bell for Adano became a Broadway play with Fredric March and a 1945 film directed by Henry King, with John Hodiak and Gene Tierney. The War Lover was filmed in 1962 with Steve McQueen. The Child Buyer was staged in 1964, and Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit (2017) dramatised the events of The Algiers Motel Incident.
Was John Hersey accused of plagiarism?
Yes. The essayist Anne Fadiman called him a “compulsive plagiarist”, saying he used whole paragraphs from Laurence Bergreen’s biography of James Agee in a New Yorker essay on Agee, and that much of Men on Bataan (1942) came from Time dispatches by her mother, Annalee Jacoby, and Melville Jacoby.
Was John Hersey born in China?
Yes, in Tianjin (then Tientsin) on 17 June 1914, to American missionary parents. He learned Chinese before English and lived in China until he was ten; A Single Pebble and The Call are set there.
Is John Hersey still alive?
No. He died on 24 March 1993 at his winter home in Key West, Florida, aged 78, and was buried on Martha’s Vineyard.
Footnotes
- John Hersey — Wikipedia
- John Hersey — Encyclopædia Britannica
- A Bell for Adano — Wikipedia
- How John Hersey Revealed the Horrors of the Atomic Bomb — Literary Hub
- John Hersey’s lasting testament — Engelsberg Ideas
- Algiers Motel Incident (1967) — BlackPast
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Fiction is a clarifying agent. It makes truth plausible.”
— John Hersey, “The Novel of Contemporary History”, The Atlantic (1949)
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