Connect: Written in 1946, Hiroshima by John Hersey, is regularly cited as the best single work of American journalism in the last century. Shortly before the turn of the millennium, for instance, it came first in a Top 100 of the 20th Century list published by New York University.
Such lists are a journalistic device, of course, and being unavoidably subjective, must not be taken too seriously.
Nonetheless, in spite of criticisms in more recent decades - not graphic enough, too perpetrator-centred, not judgmental enough - Hersey's 31,000-word report (about a third of an average length literary novel) is still highly rated. Uniquely, it took up almost a full issue of the New Yorker magazine of August 31st, 1946, which quickly sold out and is now a collector's item.
Following publication, ABC Radio broadcast a full reading of Hiroshima within a week and a half. Alfred Knopf quickly published it in book form and it became a huge hit in the Book of the Month club. Other media - an unusual feature for that time - commented, usually but not always favourably, on its techniques, importance and success.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Defenders of the act have always argued that it saved a million (mostly American) lives. Denouncers of it have scorned that argument and claim that the use of such a bomb - particularly on a civilian population - was nothing less than utter barbarism. It's a row without definite resolution.
Certainly, the world at that time was used to, and indeed largely inured to, death on a colossal scale. By then, the second World War had killed about 50 million people, so the estimated 80,000 immediate deaths in Hiroshima merely represented another splinter. Still, the fact that a single bomb caused so much death, suffering and related damage changed war and the world forever.
Three days later, the slightly smaller Japanese city of Nagasaki was struck by another atomic bomb. Because the Hiroshima bomb ("Little Boy") used uranium and the Nagasaki one ("Fat Man") was plutonium-based, critics have argued that the decision to use such horror weapons was not only grotesque but designed to allow an examination of the comparative results. It's a compelling argument.
Hersey's Hiroshima attempted to humanise the horror. The statistics of the second World War are alienating, so Hersey concentrated on six survivors: Ms Sasaki, a clerk; Dr Sasaki (no relation), a young surgeon; Mrs Nakamura, a tailor's widow; Dr Fujii, a medical doctor; Fr Kleinsorge, a German Jesuit; and the Rev Tanimoto, a Methodist pastor.
Through their experiences, Hersey attempted to provide a human face to the victims. His style, however, was typical New Yorker "flat" and there was much debate about its effectiveness. Was it perhaps too close to regular, institutional-voiced journalism or did its "dryness" add to its power?
In a mid-1980s letter to historian Paul Boyer, Hersey wrote: "The flat style was deliberate and I still think I was right to adopt it. A high literary manner or a show of passion would have brought me into the story as a mediator. I wanted to avoid such mediation, so the reader's experience would be as direct as possible."
Some people felt the piece was emotionless but others felt it allowed the survivors' stories to speak for themselves.
Modern editions of the report, originally organised in four parts, contain a fifth part or chapter. This was written 40 years after the others when Hersey returned to Japan to discover what had happened to his original six interviewees. Two of them - Dr Fujii and Fr Kleinsorge - had died. Nonetheless, Hersey described how they had lived in the shadow of the bomb.
Dr Fujii had attempted to suppress all memories of the bombing, while Fr Kleinsorge had suffered ailments because of exposure to radiation. Tanimoto became the group's "celebrity". On one visit to the United States he appeared on the TV programme This Is Your Life where, very uncomfortably, he met Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped the bomb on the city.
You could hardly describe that sort of media treatment as "flat". In fact, it was screaming: Hiroshima as entertainment. Here in Dublin, Gay Byrne's The Late Late Show also welcomed members of the crew of the Enola Gay. It sounded bizarre but the crew held annual get-togethers.
The treatment television has given to Hiroshima - especially to Tanimoto on This Is Your Life - says as much about the drift of the world since the second World War as any political analysis. Perhaps it hasn't meant to, or perhaps it doesn't care either way so long as the ratings are good, but you have to suspect there's been a gradual yet sustained trivialising of nuclear bombs.
Still, there's never been one used since Nagasaki was blitzed. It may, of course, be just a matter of time. Hersey's account of Hiroshima is growing old now but it remains proof that print can sometimes reach parts that no other medium can. Despite its faults (there is, after all, an appropriate time to scream), it should be placed on the Leaving Cert syllabus.