In his august years, Hersey continued to write on issues of modern society. He wrote two nonfiction books about education and racism called The Algiers Motel Incident (1968) and Letter to the Alumni (1970). The Conspiracy (1972) used Roman history to explore issues of modern society. Hersey edited The Writer's Craft in 1974, a book of essays about writing. In this particular edition, Hersey included an interview with Ralph Ellison.
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." No matter how Hersey's novels are classified, they delve into issues of any society — issues such as racism, education, democracy, and personal freedom. Hersey had an amazing ability to take extreme disasters of epic proportion such as the Holocaust or the detonating of a nuclear bomb and personalize them so that the average reader could feel their impact on the individual. His faith in democracy and his belief in the ability of the common person to take on heroic tasks were continuing themes in his career as an author and journalist.
