To Hell And Back: The Last Train From Hiroshima

Written by Charles Pellegrino

Narrated by David Colacci

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jul 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705223109

Charles Pellegrino

Charles Pellegrino is one of the scientists who helped to create the field of forensic archaeology. He is the author of To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima, and has worked sites ranging from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Titanicand the cities of Vesuvius. With James Powell at Brookhaven National Laboratory, he co-designed the Valkyrie interstellar rocket, which makes an appearance in The Killing Star and also in the Avatar films. Pellegrino works closely with James Cameron, who, along with George Zebrowski, tends to be “a little apocalyptic.”   

Reviews for To Hell And Back

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Seventy years ago the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing unfathomable devastation and loss lo lives. Any book that uses the testimony from actual people who survived or witnessed this destruction and does not focus on the political always proves to have more of an impact. At least for me. There are pictures now in my head that will never leaves, passages I have read that I will not forget.

The author goes int depth of what the actual waves of the bomb did to a person, to the buildings and why it missed some who were so close but survived. Some of this was confusing to me though I felt the author patiently tried to relate this message in simpler terms, I just don't have much of a technical mindset. All in all a memorable, well written book , a book about a time I hope will never come again.

ARC from NetGalley.