Good evening.

Tonights show marks the beginning of our seventh season on PBS Kansas, and some 150 shows later, we could not be prouder or happier.

What could be better than spending time with some fabulous people, sharing conversation about books, writing, and writers?

And clearl there is so much to talk about.

So many books, so little time.

One of the critical aspects of our show is determining what book or author to discuss with you.

Of course, the principal determinative facto is that I have previously read and found a book or author of value.

I seek to bring you books that I consider to be well-written and that educate, entertain, and inform.

On a recent visit to the Ford Rockwell branc of the Wichita Public Library, I spotted The Little Liar by Mitch Albom on the shelf.

Although I had previously read Alboms Tuesdays With Morrie, one of the best selling memoirs of all time and The Five People You Meet in Heaven, I was not at all familiar with The Little Liar which was copyrighted in 2023.

I finished the book on February 1st, 2025, and I'm so glad that I did.

Won't you now come along with me as we go inside the cover?

Mitch Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold more than 41 million copies in 47 languages worldwide.

Albom writes that while visiting a museum over a decade ago, he saw a video “from a survivor recounting how Jews were sometimes used to lie to fellow Jews about where the trains to th concentration camps were going.

That perversion of trut with life and death on the line stayed with me months and even years later.” The seed for this book was thus planted.

As Albom also notes: “This story is a work of fiction, but many brutal truths went into its construction.

A novel is not a history book, of course, but whenever possible the events of the story mirror what took place during the late 1930s and 40s in the city of Salonika, Greece, where ultimately 50,000 Jews were loaded into railroad cars and sent north.” As we begin the story, Nico is a boy who always told the truth.

Thinking that he is saving his family, Nico persuades his fello Jewish residents to board trains heading north where new jobs and safety await.

Unaware that he is being used, the innocent boy reassures those milling at the station platform every day.

It is only when he sees his own family being herded into a boxcar that he realizes he has helped send them, and everyone he knows and loves, to their doom at Auschwitz.

Nico never told the truth again.

This is ultimately a book about Europe, World War Two, and the horrors of Hitler's so-called Final Solution.

However it is written from a different and interesting perspective, involving a seldom told but nevertheless important story about Jews in Greece.

Is a book that moves quickly and one that is told with respect, dignity and solemnity, and one that involves the reader on a very personal level.

Tonight's book has bee The Little Liar, by Mitch Albom.

I am honored to recommend it to you.

I suggest it is always important to read history and to learn from history.

Thanks for supporting PBS Kansas and for watching Inside the Cover.

We look forward to another season of seriously good book talk.

Goodnight, and I look forward to our next conversation right here on PBS Kansas.