Join us for a special Veteran’s Day book talk featuring book editors Roberta Lesner Bernstein and Judy Lesner Holstein. Their father, soldier Sam Lesner, wrote daily letters home during World War II where he talked about the war in all its aspects: loneliness, missing family, coping with army bureaucracy, the challenges of treating shell-shocked soldiers and then sending them back into battle, the urgency of defeating the anti-Semitic and racist Nazi enemy, and much more. The letters are lyrical and filled with pathos – a grim picture of the brutality of war.

Sam always intended to write a book after the war, but upon his return, the letters were packed away in a box. In 2004, his daughters accidently found the box of letters, long after his passing in 1990, and embarked upon the task of fulfilling his plan. The result is Somewhere in Europe: The World War II Letters of Sam Lesner.

Please register on the library’s website, by phone (312-742-1945) or in person at any Chicago Public Library location.

Offered in partnership with the Edgewater Branch Library