To Hell and Back offers listeners a stunning, "you are there" time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino's scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.



At the narrative's core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand—the Japanese civilians on the ground. As the first city targeted, Hiroshima is the focus of most histories. Pellegrino gives equal weight to the bombing of Nagasaki, symbolized by the thirty people who are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki—where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of both cataclysms within Ground Zero. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell behind which Yamaguchi's office conference was convened—placing him and few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection while the entire building disappeared around them.



Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the "official report," showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and why.