Eighty years after Hiroshima, a new book narrates the history of the atomic bomb

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4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

It’s been 80 years since the United States detonated atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths. Garrett Graff’s new book The Devil Reached Toward the Sky is an oral history from scientists, politicians, pilots, soldiers and survivors of these weapons. In today’s episode, he speaks with NPR’s Scott Simon about the development of the atomic bomb, the lived experience of those who survived the attacks, and the threat of nuclear war today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. As a reporter, as someone who interviews
0:07.6	people and then uses those interviews to tell a story, I think the format of the oral history has
0:13.7	got to be one of the hardest ones to pull off. This is when you do a whole bunch of interviews
0:18.9	and you just use quotes and what people said to lay out the story.
0:23.5	You handcuff your own authorial powers and just let the subjects speak for themselves.
0:29.2	So why do it?
0:30.2	What do you get out of an oral history that you don't get out of a more straightforward telling?
0:36.2	The writer Garrett Graf has written an oral history
0:38.4	about a pretty big topic, the atomic bomb. It's titled, The Devil Reach Toward the Sky. And in
0:45.5	this interview with NPR Scott Simon, Graff talks about the oral history's unique ability to put
0:50.8	you in the lives of people who don't know what's going to happen next. It gives you
0:55.9	a sense of what it's like to be right next to these scientists who don't know what the future of
1:01.4	the atomic bomb or even of World War II looks like. That's coming up. In the U.S., national security
1:09.4	news can feel far away from daily life.
1:12.1	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:16.7	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:18.7	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:22.5	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:26.0	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:31.5	It's been just about 80 years since President Truman told the nation, August 6, 1945.
1:38.0	A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.
1:47.8	That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT.
	...

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