Shockwave - Stephen Walker

At 8.15 a.m. on 6 August 1945, Major Tom Ferebee, the ladykilling, poker-playing bombardier on board a B29 bomber flicks a switch. In the bomb bay a single shackle drops its load into the freezing air. It plummets towards a city but no commuters look up. Then the bomb explodes. The shockwave rips out from the epicentre, flattening every object in its path. Tens of thousands of people are annihilated. In that instant, the name Hiroshima is stamped on the consciousness of a world that will never be the same again. In this tense, real-life narrative of events unprecedented interviews with witnesses interweave in a tapestry of voices. They include the co-pilot who writes a minute-by-minute diary on board the Enola Gay. The atomic scientist who arms the bomb in mid-air equipped with a screwdriver and a spanner. The Japanese student desperately searching for his lover in the ruins of the city. The doctor forced to treat thousands of burnt bodies with only soy-bean oil and wet leaves. Combining a rich array of sources with brilliant storytelling, Stephen Walker grippingly charts the defining event of the 20th century, on its 60th anniversary.