John Hersey, Charles E. Martin & Obi

Yesterday, June 17th, was John Hersey’s birthday, and @davidhudson posted about it on tumblr. Rather than his customary, fascinatingly-curated portrait, though, Hudson posted the cover of the August 31, 1946 issue of The New Yorker, which was entirely filled with Hersey’s devastating essay, “Hiroshima,” the first firsthand report of the horrific experience and aftermath of the US atomic bomb attack a year earlier. I’d never seen the actual magazine, and immediately was caught up by two things: Charles E. Martin’s carefree summer cover in no way prepares you for what’s inside. If anything, it misleads with its frolicking encyclopedia of vacation fun. Also The New Yorker cover, in 1946, is not where I would have expected to see so many people of color, certainly not engaging in so many activities coded so white: sailing, golf, croquet, tennis, horse jumping? So this is either a subtle social revolution ten years before Althea Gibson, and two whole years before even the US military was…