Coming in August: The Devil Reached Toward the Sky

My new book — and a special preorder promotion

Author

Garrett Graff
July 08, 2025 • Reading Time: 6 minutes

Newsletter Friends,

A month from now, my next book will officially arrive in the world, THE DEVIL REACHED TOWARD THE SKY, an oral history of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This will be my third book-length volume of oral history — following on two books, about 9/11 and D-Day, that focused on the two most famous single days of the 21st Century and the 20th century.

Now, this volume chronicles the most consequential moment and invention of the 20th century — the moment that changed science and geopolitics forever — but nuclear weapons are not mere history, so this book is also a warning about our future and our current moment.

This book in some ways feels the most pressing one I’ve written. I often darkly joke that I write “history” books that get filed unfortunately under “current events.” Never has that been more true as this book is published against the backdrop of a war in the Middle East over the nuclear ambitions of Iran and as the U.S. engages in a trillion-dollar upgrade to its nuclear arsenal to keep pace with Russia and China, both of which are also building new weapons far more powerful than the bombs used to end World War II.

The book pulls together the voices of about 500 voices to tell the intertwined story of nuclear physics, the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, the arrival and advance of World War II in the Pacific, and the tremendous effort of the Manhattan Project to deliver two atomic bombs that helped end the war, as well as the haunting on-the-ground stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves. It’s a portrait of the war and nuclear weapons that you’ve never seen before.

But you don’t have to take my word for it — here’s what none other than THE James Patterson said about it:

“If you are an intelligent person, or at the very least think you are, you have to read Garrett Graff’s The Devil Reached Toward the Sky. Even if you don’t read this lengthy masterpiece, you should keep it in your library to demonstrate that you are curious and literate. If you Zoom frequently, it should be one of the books on the shelves directly behind you so that viewers can register how smart you are. If you need to know something about the story itself—it’s everything, and more, about the atom, the atom bomb, the Manhattan Project, and the terrifying destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This period in history has never been more relevant and frightening than it is today.”

— James Patterson

Or this, from the starred review in Publisher’s Weekly: “Graff delivers a magisterial oral history of the atomic bomb. ... The result is a stunning account that brings to the fore the nuclear saga’s surreal combination of ingenuity, fate, and terror.”

“A comprehensive and engrossing account of the atomic bomb’s creation—and its effects. . . . The 500 voices who make up the oral history include famous and less-known figures, such as members of the crew who created the first controlled nuclear chain reaction; farmers whose land was needed to build massive complexes to produce enriched uranium and plutonium for the bombs; ‘project spouses’ at all three locations raising families under difficult living conditions; politicians and military men involved in planning and executing the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and Japanese survivors of the bombings. . . . Excellent oral history.” —Kirkus Reviews

As I usually do, I’m doing a little special promotion for people who want to preorder signed copies of the book — for the first 250 copies ordered at my local indie Phoenix Books, we’re including a special gift from Hiroshima. 

As some of you may know, one young victim in Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki, folded origami cranes as she lay dying of radiation poisoning, following a tradition that held that making 1,000 cranes — known as senbazuru — would grant the maker a wish. Her act has come to symbolize the global push for peace. Today, some 10 million peace cranes — known as orizuru — are delivered to Hiroshima from all over the world annually. In recent years, the local government has begun offering those cranes to craftspeople to reuse. This process, known as Re:ORIZURU, relies on a diverse group of “people, creators, manufacturers, people with disabilities, housewives who have difficulty working outside the home, and others who utilize their own strengths and abilities” to unfold, sort, and repurpose the cranes for inspirational projects.

For the first 250 orders at Phoenix Books, we’re including notepaper made from those recycled peace cranes, crafted by a local brand called Earth Hiroshima. 

I’ll be sending along some more information later this month about some appearances and book talks I’ll be doing around the book launch.

 

Yours in reading,

GMG

PS: If you’ve missed either of the first two oral histories I’ve done and are interested, here are links: