Susan Orlean posted a blog today about how she’d assigned John Hersey’s amazing and increasingly marginalized novella, Hiroshima, and how none of her students recognized the Japan it described. I was tickled because I’ve recently pulled my copy off of the shelf, as a way of meditating on Japan at another crisis moment. So I guess I’m saying: Read Hiroshima! And please let me know the credit for this picture, which covered the original copy of Hersey’s book. I’m incredibly frustrated that even Hersey’s publisher doesn’t have a credit for it on their website! UPDATE: Hat tip to David Quigg, who found out that this is an Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph. And doesn’t it look like one, now that you’ve heard the name?

Susan Orlean posted a blog today about how she’d assigned John Hersey’s amazing and increasingly marginalized novella, Hiroshima, and how none of her students recognized the Japan it described. I was tickled because I’ve recently pulled my copy off of the shelf, as a way of meditating on Japan at another crisis moment.

So I guess I’m saying: Read Hiroshima! And please let me know the credit for this picture, which covered the original copy of Hersey’s book. I’m incredibly frustrated that even Hersey’s publisher doesn’t have a credit for it on their website!

UPDATE: Hat tip to David Quigg, who found out that this is an Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph. And doesn’t it look like one, now that you’ve heard the name?