In this nonfiction book, Hersey describes nine real situations in which people survived when they shouldn't have. He tells the stories of an elderly woman who survives a flood in her New England town caused by a hurricane, a family of refugees who fled from the communists in Hungary to Austria in 1956, John F. Kennedy and the sailors he saved after their boat was destroyed by the Japanese during World War II, a typical American soldier who had to readjust to life as a civilian after World War II, another American soldier whose traumatic experiences in Europe during World War II left him severely mentally disabled, three people who survived Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and five Japanese people who survived the bombing of Hiroshima. The last part of the book was later published on its own as Hiroshima, one of Hersey's best known books.

While parts of the book were really depressing, I did like the book a lot. The idea behind the title is that man is here to stay; humans can survive in extraordinary circumstances. My favorite story was the one about the Hungarians because it introduced me to a period of history that I knew very little about before. His accounts of Holocaust and atomic bomb survivors were also stunning in the way they were presented. ( )

John Hersey, a WWII correspondent of considerable literate as well as journalistic abilities, explores the question of survivors in this book of eight short stories. He interviews returning servicemen who have been through traumas, Holocaust survivors, Kennedy's PT boat survivors, and survivors of Hiroshima to see if there was some special quality that had made them survivors. The most outstanding story for me was Joe is Home Now, a tale of a returning soldier who has lost an arm and is full of anger and nightmares of the war. He returns to his old community and tries to adjust, but though people are kind, he seems destined to end up an alienated alcoholic. Enter Mary, his old girlfriend, and we see the restorative power of a woman who has faith in the man she loves--and we have a survivor. Throughout the book there seems to be as many different answers to what makes a survivor as there are stories. It makes for interesting reading and reflection. ( )