On this day in 1946, John Hersey's "Hiroshima" was published in The New Yorker. The article took up all sixty-eight pages of text space (everything except for the "Goings On" calendar), an unprecedented and unannounced event for the magazine. Nor did the cover picture of a summery park scene give any indication, though there was a white band on the outside warning readers of the departure, and an editorial note on page one expressing the magazine's conviction that the nuclear explosion was an event "that everyone might well take time to consider." The magazine sold out almost immediately, with scalpers soon charging twenty dollars for the fifteen-cent issue ... FULL STORY »
