This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Lesley M.M. Blume is a journalist, historian, and author of Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World. She's a New York native, currently based in Los Angeles.

What brought you to the Library?

I was doing research for my new book, Fallout, which documents the 1945–46 U.S. government cover-up of the full reality of atomic aftermath in Hiroshima, and how New Yorker reporter John Hersey was able to get the true story and reveal it to the world. The NYPL houses the historical records of the New Yorker magazine, a crucial repository for my project.

What's your favorite spot in the Library? 

The manuscripts and archives reading room in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. I have spent countless days and hours there for my book Fallout —but also other projects, including my book about the rise of Ernest Hemingway and an investigative Vanity Fair story about a mysterious painting attributed to Jackson Pollock.

Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn. 

Honestly, I had low expectations for the New Yorker papers: they are very picked over, for the New Yorker, its founders, and its brilliant team of contributors have had many biographies written about them over the years. But the archive proved to be a gold mine. I discovered one document which revealed that John Hersey and his New Yorker team had had to submit his report to the War Department for vetting and possible censorship, which was an explosive revelation in my narrative. And I found another document there that revealed how the Soviets felt about Hersey and his article, 'Hiroshima.'  In short, they hated him, and they hated his story—and even dispatched a Soviet "journalist" to discredit Hersey's findings. Neither of these developments have ever been reported before. All of this came from NYPL archival materials that had either been ignored or overlooked by generations of my predecessor scholars.

What research tool could you not live without?

My laptop, power cord, and my archive-induced stamina. I can sit or stand in one place for hours, not eating or drinking or anything, just flipping through and scouring documents. AND, above all, I absolutely could not live without my research associate Anastasiya Osipova, whose masochistic archive-stamina rivals my own.

What's your guilty pleasure distraction?

Sitting out front, behind Patience or Fortitude, drinking a latte and eating gummy bears.

Where is your favorite place to eat in the neighborhood?

It's a smallish hike, but if I've had a very good research day, I'll trot down 42nd Street and eat at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. Not the main room, but the back room, the one they call the Saloon. I'll order oysters and this suspiciously inexpensive, open-faced caviar sandwich they serve on white bread. 

Have I left anything out that you’d like to tell other researchers? 

Leave no paper unturned. Go through the files that don't even seem relevant. That's where I found my most important materials for Fallout. Never give in to fatigue.  Make yourself take the extra step. And: work with a good fact-checker when your manuscript is done.