New Releases by John Hersey

Dé klassieker over het getto van Warschau, geschreven door John Hersey, Pulitzer Prize-winnaar en auteur van Hiroshima De historische roman De muur speelt zich af in het getto van Warschau, waar in 1943 een deel van de Joodse bevolking zich organiseerde in een groots verzet tegen de SS. Hersey schrijft in dagboekvorm, geïnspireerd door documenten die zijn gevonden in Warschau, over de mensonterende omstandigheden in het getto en over hoe een paar honderd uitgehongerde mannen en vrouwen met geïmproviseerde wapens wisten te ontsnappen aan de nazi's. Pijnlijk indringend zijn de beschrijvingen van de karakters van mensen die onder deze extreme omstandigheden moesten leven, sterken en zwakken, heldhaftigen en lafaards, fanatici en verraders. Hartverwarmend en ontroerend zijn de bewijzen van kameraadschap in dagen van uiterste nood. De muur is een aangrijpende roman over een van de meest schokkende episodes uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog. In de pers 'Alleen een échte romancier kan warmte, compassie en humor brengen in wat een historicus alleen maar had kunnen beschrijven als een grimmige, hopeloze, tragische reeks gebeurtenissen. Alleen een gevoelige schrijver kan ons overhalen mee te gaan in zo'n beangstigend avontuur en te blijven tot het einde.' The New York Times 'Een aangrijpend, buitengewoon boek. De feiten, zoals overgeleverd uit authentieke bronnen, zijn van een dramatiek die het voorstellingsvermogen ver te boven gaat. Met ongeëvenaard vakmanschap heeft Hersey uit deze bronnen een vertelling geweven waarin de mensen zichtbaar worden, van vlees en bloed, in alle tinten zwart, wit en grijs van het echte leven. Een mijlpaal in de Amerikaanse literatuur.' Kirkus Reviews 'Een heroïsch verhaal.' The Atlantic

John Fist is a talented overachiever who has become restless and bored in his second year at Sheldon, an elite New England college. He is losing motivation, increasingly finding it “too far to walk” to his philosophy class across campus. So when the devil in sophomore’s clothing (a fellow student named Chum Breed) offers him all the most intense experiences of the modern world in exchange for a twenty-six-week lease on his soul, Fist eagerly signs up. The anticipated adventures, however, turn out not to be quite what he had bargained for. Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey’s Too Far to Walk is a bracing updating of the classic Faust legend, a compelling coming-of-age novel, and a masterful work of mid-century fiction.

From the bestselling author of Hiroshima, a searing account of police brutality, white racism, and black rage in 1960s Detroit. On the evening of July 25, 1967, on the third night of the 12th Street Riot, Detroit police raided the Algiers Motel. Acting on a report of gunfire, officers rounded up the occupants of the motel''s annex—several black men and two white women—and proceeded to beat them and repeatedly threaten to kill them. By the end of the night, three of the men were dead. Three police officers and a private security guard were tried for their deaths; none were convicted. In The Algiers Motel Incident, first published in 1968, Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Hersey strings together interviews, police reports, court testimony, and news stories to recount the terrible events of that night. The result is chaotic and sometimes confusing; facts remain elusive. But, Hersey concludes, the truth is clear: three young black men were murdered "for being, all in all, black young men and part of the black rage of the time." With a new foreword by award-winning author Danielle L. McGuire, The Algiers Motel Incident is a powerful indictment of racism and the US justice system.

Writing at the height of his powers, John Hersey has created a taut, dazzling novel of suspense and revelation—in which we watch, mesmerized, the fateful convergence of two lives. A young woman, having fled from her suddenly unbearable “college kid” self—and from the place, even the lover, that were part of it—comes alone to a strange city, anxiously waiting for something new and important to begin…. A man—breezy, ponytailed, beautiful—stranded by the passing of the sixties whose excitements had nurtured and consumed him, now lavishes his whole self on loving craftsmanship, on the construction of simple, perfect wooden doors, on the mystery of locks, and on the artful offering of security (his locks and doors) to women who are alone…. The meeting of these two, and their love affair—its choreography masterminded by one, unsuspected by the other—are hypnotically told in a novel that illumines the fearful and the fear-makers in our decade.

Nero’s secret police believe they have come on the first hints of a plot against the emperor’s life. Once promising and gifted—friend of poets, pupil of the great Seneca—Nero has now bloodied himself and grown fat on power, and he has turned his back on the men of intellect who used to be his chosen circle. He has driven Seneca into retirement. He has proscribed the writings of Lucan, Rome’s foremost poet. Crass, mediocre men—the military and the secret police—now have his ear and favor. While he and his court give themselves to dreamlike pleasures and fetes, the obsessed secret police close in on (or do they foment, or imagine?) the conspiracy of the men of letters…

The President has given me permission to take a kind of voyage with him—to watch him closely through a working week….I will be with him, most of the time, hour in and hour out…. At 8:33 on a rainy Monday in March, 1975, John Hersey sits down on a straight cane-backed chair in the Oval Office to begin soaking up impressions of what happens—in post-Watergate Washington—at the center of American power. Through five and a half days, he will stay close to the President, observing him as he consults with his own staff, with members of Congress, with his Cabinet, with Rockefeller; watching him on the exercise bike, at the barber’s, greeting Miss America: absorbing his confidences as he talks after dinner, in the private quarters of the White House, about his childhood and about his college years when it was difficult to make ends meet. Following the President, Hersey observes in detail all the important moments—as well as the incidental ones—that show what Gerald Ford is like on the job. In this extraordinary book he builds a brilliant and revealing portrait, letting the reader see Ford’s strengths and limitations. And so perceptively does Hersey draw significance from his observations that the insights seem to explode like time bombs. I have seen all week that it is not easy for Gerald Ford…to make what he refers to, in the language of umpires, as “a tough call.” Yet once he has made such a decision, he does not agonize…he becomes convinced of its rightness and is stubborn in its defense…. In reading The President, each of us emerges knowing more than ever before, not only about this imperturbable “iron” man, the first President we did not elect, but also about how the Presidency really operates. In John Hersey’s report we come to understand—the man, and the things that persuade him. And we come to sense…how good it would be if in some way he could speak—good listener that he is—one-to-one with ordinary men and women, his constituents, from whom he has somehow drifted so far away.

In the immediate sense, this long, eventful and agonizingly suspenseful novel shows what fear, secret hidden fear, can do to even one of those seeming heroes, a war lover. In the longer view, however, this may come to be regarded as the great and ultimate anti-war novel of our time. The scene is an American bomber base in England sometime before D-Day. The characters are the crew of a Flying Fortress named The Body, particularly the pilot, Buzz Marrow, and the co-pilot, Boman, who tells the story of his worship of Marrow, and of how his hero succumbed, on their final crucial mission, to the fatal weakness with which he camouflaged his fear—his secret delight in annihilation. Boman also tells the story of the English girl he loved (and Mr. Hersey’s many admirers will note a new tenderness and passion in these scenes), and of her fateful intervention in Marrow’s collapse. Both narrative lines flow together and are superbly united in the sustained and powerful climax.

This classic novel and winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700-year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. Although stituated during one of the most devastating experiences in human history, John Hersey''s story speaks with unflinching patriotism and humanity.

Alternating a tale of the past that has become a part of Key West legend with a contemporary story that reflects the pulse of life there today, Hersey weaves in these stories a brilliant human tapestry of the place that means a great deal to him. From the author of A Bell For Adano and Hiroshima comes this final collections of stories.

From the revered Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer, comes his National Bestseller on one of the world’s oldest and most popular activities, fishing. Presented in narrative form as a conversation between a Fisherman and the Stranger, Hersey draws upon his own experiences and passion as the fisherman reflects on the age old sport, offering his own insights and thoughts. From the depths of the ocean to the creatures near the shore, Hersey perfectly answers why fishing has been such an integral part of humanity. “Almost no one has answered “why fish?” better than Mr. Hersey . . . what he does best of all is evoke wonder.”—New York Times Book Review “Blues is, of course, about much more than the pleasures and techniqu3es of fishing; it is, as Fisherman tells Stranger, about interconnections—the ties between mankind and the natural world, among others.”—The New Yorker “Wonderful . . . He gives us a rich and vivid sense of ocean life. . . . The whole thing is as stately as a minuet, and as graceful.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Find out how war smells, looks, and feels to fighting men—and how courage grows from their desperate will to live. In five true stories of World War II— • Survival • The Battle of the River • Nine Men on a Four-Man Raft • Borie's Last Battle • Front Seats at Sea War —a famous war correspondent takes you aboard John F. Kennedy's doomed PT-109...into the horror of Guadalcanal...onto a death raft in the Southwest Pacific.

Compassionate account of the catastrophic event that heralded the coming of the atomic age.

John Hersey (1914?93) was a correspondent for Time and Life magazines when in 1942 he was sent to cover Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific. While there, Hersey observed a small battle upon which Into the Valley is based. While the battle itself was not of great significance, Hersey gives insightful details concerning the jungle environment, recounts conversations among the men before, during, and after battle, and describes how the wounded were evacuated as well as other works of daily heroism.

A young American engineer sent to China to inspect the unruly Yangtze River travels up through the river''s gorges searching for dam sites. Pulled on a junk hauled by forty-odd trackers, he is carried, too, into the settled, ancient way of life of the people of the Yangtze -- until the interplay of his life with theirs comes to a dramatic climax.

Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey''s novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty -- a gripping and visceral story, impossible to put down.

Contains 2 parts: Harry S. Truman, first published in The New Yorker, 1950-1951; and Gerald R. Ford, which was originally published in 1975 under title: The President.

Hersey tells the story of an old lady marooned on a rooftop amidst floods caused by a hurricane. He ends with his famour Hinoshima.

Account of the revelation of the traits of the people of Tunxis when they decide to launch a community-wide drive to rid themselves of marmots.

Edition originale, 1950. Sous forme de journal, l'auteur écrit l'histoire du ghetto de Varsovie entre novembre 1939 et mai 1943. Il a consulté de nombreux documents, tant en polonais qu'en yiddish, sur cet épisode poignant de l'extermination systématique des Juifs par les nazis. Il met en valeur la riche spiritualité de certaines des victimes.