Event Details
Magic City Books is proud to welcome Lesley Blume, author of "Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed it to the World," for a virtual event on Monday March 8th.
"Fallout" was Selected as one of Vanity Fair‘s best books of 2020, was named a Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2020 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Lesley Blume reveals how one courageous American reporter uncovered one of the deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century–the true effects of the atom bomb–potentially saving millions of lives. Released on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, "Fallout" is an engrossing detective story, as well as an important piece of hidden history that shows how one heroic scoop saved–and can still save–the world. This free event will be hosted on the Zoom Platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the event on Zoom visit here.
Fallout is currently available at Magic City Books. To purchase a copy visit Magic City Books in person or online here.
About "Fallout"
Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked–until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world.
As Hersey and his editors prepared his article for publication, they kept the story secret–even from most of their New Yorker colleagues. When the magazine published “Hiroshima” in August 1946, it became an instant global sensation, and inspired pervasive horror about the hellish new threat that America had unleashed. Since 1945, no nuclear weapons have ever been deployed in war partly because Hersey alerted the world to their true, devastating impact. This knowledge has remained among the greatest deterrents to using them since the end of World War II.
Lesley M.M. Blume is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author and biographer. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Paris Review, among many other publications. Her last nonfiction book, "Everybody Behaves Badly," was a New York Times bestseller.