John Hersey Books

Easton Press John Hersey books:
Life sketches - signed first edition - 1989
Hiroshima - 2007

Franklin Library John Hersey books:
The Walnut Door - limited first edition (not signed John Hersey) - 1977
A Bell for Adano - signed limited edition - 1978
The Wall - signed limited edition - 1982
The Call - signed first edition - 1985
A Bell for Adano - Pulitzer Prize classic - 1986
Blues - signed first edition - 1987

John Hersey biography
John Hersey was an American author and journalist who was born in Tientsin, China, and educated at Yale University and Cambridge University. John Hersey joined the staff of the weekly new magazine Time in 1937, and during World War Two Hersey served as a Time correspondent in both the Pacific and European theaters of operations. Subsequently John Hersey was a senior editor of Life and editor of the magazine '47 and '48. John Hersey is the author of numerous books such as: A Bell for Adano, Into the Valley, Men on Bataan and more notable books.

 

The Call
An American missionary in China, David Treadup, is the protagonist of John Hersey’s magnificent novel, a novel whose richness of character, color, and incident both explores the evangelical impulse in this country the peculiarly American spirit of wanting to help others and reflects the whole complex history of China from 1900 to the aftermath of World War II.

 

The Call is the story of one man’s spiritual odyssey as he strives to reconcile his commitment to God with his love of the struggling mass of Chinese humanity, to whom he pledges his life. It is the story of an American family choosing to make a home for themselves in an alien world that is sometimes exhilarating, sometimes overwhelming, always surprising and periodically inundated by history, famine, war, revolution. It is the story of a marriage of abiding partnership, of a wife at once strong and vulnerable, struggling to be close to a husband whose awesome challenge to somehow make the world a better place for the Chinese people will always claim him.

 

Treadup’s large adventure opens out from rural upstate New York, where he is raised on a struggling, isolated farm, to the Syracuse campus where, caught up in evangelical fervor, he is struck by a blinding light (through the voice of a Scottish rugby player) and answers the Call, to vast and turbulent China, where he is sent by the Y.M.C.A. to save souls. There, in the face of this three-thousand-year-old civilization, the tall, gregarious, ambitious American becomes quickly aware of his own insufficiency. But Treadup’s astonishing resourcefulness (who would think that a gyroscope could sway multitudes?), and his ever-growing passion to penetrate to the heart of China to bring its yearning people into the twentieth century, fire his energies again and again over the years of triumphs and frustrations, of rekindled vision and lost hopes.

John Hersey, himself the child of a missionary family in China, brings to this deeply human story a profound and intimate knowledge of the life it encompasses, giving us an extraordinary authenticity of place and feeling. It is his crowning achievement.

A Bell for Adano
An Italian-American major during World War II 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.


Life sketches
John Hersey  presents a collection of his biographical sketches of memorable individuals both famous and obscure, from Sinclair Lewis and John F. Kennedy to the children of the Holocaust.


Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic.

 

The Wall
Riveting & compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men & 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 & as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation & cruelty a gripping, visceral story, impossible to put down.


Blues
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.