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In his august years, Hersey continued to write on issues of modern society.During the 1980s, Hersey continued to write and also visit sites from his past. In June 1980, he published Aspects of the Presidency. The following year, he visited Tientsin and a number of Chinese sites that he had not seen since 1946. The highly personal novel The Call and a new edition of Hiroshima with an epilogue on the fortieth anniversary of the bombing were published in 1985. In addition to these writings and trips were two novels called Blues in 1987 and Life Sketches in 1989. His last publication was in 1990 — a book of stories called Fling and Other Stories. John Hersey preferred to call his books "novels of contemporary history" instead of the more widely used "nonfiction novels." Throughout his career, John Hersey was active in organizations as a writer and involved in public issues as a private citizen. He joined the Authors League of America in 1948, becoming an officer and an active member. In 1953, he was the youngest writer ever asked to join the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1954, he became a member of the National Citizens Committee for the Public Schools and pursued his interest in writing and speaking about education. At the White House Arts Festival in 1965, he did a public reading from Hiroshima.Before his death in 1993, Hersey was recognized by Yale University for his contributions to journalism and literature. Yale established the annual John Hersey Lecture, an avenue for bringing writers to the campus to talk about their work. Hersey died on March 24, 1993, at the age of 78.

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By 1960, Hersey turned his efforts to education, racism, and the disenchantment of 1960's students. Hersey was keenly aware of the movement to produce more scientists, technicians, mathematicians, and engineers at the expense of schools that foster individual fulfillment. During the period from 1965 to 1970, Hersey returned to Yale as Master of Pierson College. There he taught, mentored, and wrote books that dramatized and personalized issues such as fascism, racism, and the Holocaust. He spent 1970 to 1971 on leave from Yale at the American Academy in Rome. His relationship with Yale continued as an adjunct professor of English until his retirement in 1984.

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A Bell for Adano was published in 1944 and won Hersey the Pulitzer Prize on May 8, 1945. It is the story of a small, occupied village in Italy. This village is temporarily run by Major Victor Joppolo, the military governor and a man of Italian descent, who tries to teach democratic ideals to the villagers. Hersey developed his story after studying the work of a military governor for an article for Life. His novel is a hymn to the common man who steps up to a position where he can help people. An example of democracy in action, Hersey's story was turned into both a Broadway play and a motion picture. Then, from 1944 to 1945, he was on assignment in China and Japan for Life and the New Yorker.

In 1946, he published Hiroshima first in its entirety in the New Yorkeron August 31, and later as a novel in October. Based on the explosion of the first nuclear bomb in 1945, the novel attempts to take the extraordinary and inexplicable event and show how it impacts ordinary human lives. It personalized the event so that Americans, as well as a worldwide audience, could begin to understand the repercussions of the bombing.
The 1950s saw four more books from Hersey, beginning with The Wall in 1950. Hersey had seen the German concentration camps in Estonia and the Warsaw ruins where 500,000 Jews had died. His book confronted the ability of man to deal with totalitarian government. In 1953, he published The Marmot Drive, a novel about New England that studied modern lives cut off from the traditions of the past. The dilemma is how can a man so love to make war and kill but also learn a natural reverence for life? Admiration for a man's will to survive instead of a love of killing is what finally comes through in Hiroshima.

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When Hersey was ten: His father became ill with encephalitis, and the family returned to America and settled in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Hersey there became . He attended Hotchkiss Preparatory School, where he worked as a waiter and janitor. His undergraduate years were spent at Yale University from 1932 to 1936. Graduating from Yale, Hersey continued his education on a Mellon Scholarship at Clare College, Cambridge University, where he studied eighteenth century English literature. At both Yale and Cambridge, he worked various jobs as a waiter, librarian, lifeguard, and tutor. Hersey never experienced a life of privilege. The jobs he held while attending college gave him a sympathy for the "common man" that would later show up in his writings.

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John Richard Hersey was born in Tientsin, China, on June 17, 1914. Two American missionaries Roscoe M. and Grace (Baird) Hersey were his parents. Growing up in China, Hersey was not familiar when it came to American attitudes and culture. He spoke Chinese fluently. Hersey loved reading and writing. He attended the British Grammar School and the American School. Later in life, he reported that his memories of growing up in China included a pretty "normal" childhood.