Profit and Public Interest: A Publication History of John Hersey's “Hiroshima”

Abstract

By exploring the production, publication, and circulation of John Hersey's “Hiroshima” in America in 1946, this study demonstrates how a landmark work of journalism traveled the breadth of the American media system, fueled more by an ethos of community building and citizenship than of commercial gain. In the case of the publication of “Hiroshima,” individuals and institutions in the American media system largely disregarded commercial imperatives to provide as many Americans as possible with vital information and a forum for debate about unsettling moral, political, and social realities of atomic warfare and the new atomic age.