Our library in Hewett Centre is open every Sunday after service during Coffee Hour in Hewett Centre, and our Library Team offers related reading lists based on the topic of the Sunday service. Here is their list for the upcoming service featuring Hisako Masaki, Cecilia Gruber, Huguette Hayden, Yvonne Marcus and Chihiro Honma on Sunday, August 3, 2025 at 11 a.m. All are welcome in Hewett Centre after the Sunday service to check out some books and to have coffee and conversation.
VanU library books related to this Sunday’s sermon:
1. Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, by Susan Southard, 2016, 940 SOU [From LibraryThing, from the publisher: “… On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a small port city on Japan’s southernmost island. An estimated 74,000 people died within the first five months, and another 75,000 were injured. … Nagasaki takes readers from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the first-hand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation. Susan Southard has spent years interviewing hibakusha (“bomb-affected people”) and researching the physical, emotional, and social challenges of post-atomic life. She weaves together dramatic eyewitness accounts with searing analysis of the policies of censorship and denial that colored much of what was reported about the bombing both in the United States and Japan. …”].
2. Security Without Nuclear Deterrence, by Commander Robert Green (Retired), 2010, 355.02 GRE [Gift of David Steele. From LibraryThing: “Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, civilization is still held hostage by over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the five recognized nuclear weapon states plus India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan. Underlying and driving this deepening global security crisis is an addiction to the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, cited by the United States, United Kingdom and France as the final, indispensable justification for maintaining their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear deterrence must therefore be challenged and alternatives offered in these three leading democracies if there is to be any serious prospect of eliminating nuclear weapons. Robert Green was a Commander in the British Royal Navy. He is now working co-ordinating the New Zealand Peace Foundation’s Disarmament & Security Centre.”].
3. Hideko Kono, Poetry After the Atomic Bomb, translated by Yumie Kono and Ariel O’Sullivan, 2023 [Gift of Lily Ha. From Amazon, a review: “These searing and moving poems by Hiroshima survivor Hideko Kono are now available in English translation by the author’s daughter, Yumie Kono, and poet Ariel O’Sullivan. From minuscule details like the burned hem of a skirt to the vast night sky with small cold stars, the poems track the shock and grief of the immediate aftermath in concise and often brilliant language.”].
4. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2006, 530 BIR [From LibraryThing: “… definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war … Immediately after Hiroshima, J. Robert Oppenheimer became the most famous scientist of his generation – one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, the embodiment of modern man confronting the consequences of scientific progress. He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials – an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force’s plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war. In the now almost-forgotten hysteria of the early 1950s, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup, and, in response, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss, superbomb advocate Edward Teller, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover worked behind the scenes to have a hearing board find that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America’s nuclear secrets. … is at once biography and history and is essential to our understanding of our recent past – and of our choices for the future.”].
5. Protest Diablo: Living and Dying Under the Shadow of a Nuclear Power Plant, by Judith Evered, 2010, 621.48 EVE [Gift of John Carter Maitland. From LibraryThing: “Judith Evered’s memoir shares her experiences with other activists who planned and carried out the 1981 blockade of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which is located on a seismically active, biologically rich part of the central California coast in San Luis Obispo County. She includes practical strategies and tactics of civil disobedience and unified nonviolent actions used by activists.”].
6. The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, by Ursula Franklin, 2006, 303.66 FRA [From LibraryThing: “… demonstrates subtle, yet critical, linkages across a range of subjects: the pursuit of peace and social justice, theology, feminism, environmental protection, education, government, and citizen activism. This thoughtful collection, drawn from more than four decades of research and teaching, brings readers into an intimate discussion with Franklin, and makes a passionate case for how to build a society centered around peace.”].