90 Seconds to Midnight

In 2015 Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow proclaimed at the United Nations, ‘Humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.’ She knew this from first-hand experience: when she was thirteen, her home town of Hiroshima was annihilated by an atomic bomb. Since 1945, with a resolve befitting her samurai ancestors, she has dedicated her life to warning the world about the horrors of nuclear attack.

90 Seconds to Midnight tells the story of Thurlow’s 70-year crusade, and how she shifted the global discussion from nuclear deterrence to humanitarian consequences – the key to crafting the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Regarded as the conscience of the antinuclear movement, Thurlow accepted the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. With the fate of humanity at stake, Thurlow challenged leaders of the nuclear-armed states until finally, on 22 January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into effect, banning nuclear weapons under international law.

90 Seconds to Midnight recounts Thurlow’s ascent from the netherworld of Hiroshima, where she saw, heard and smelled death, to her relentless efforts to protect the world from an unspeakable fate, so that the world can learn from the past and take action so that it could never happen again.

About the Author

Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs is a professor of medicine emerita at Stanford University. She is the author of two critically acclaimed books, Jonas Salk: A Life and Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin’s Disease.