Librarian finds rare copy of The New Yorker’s Hiroshima issue

This month marks seventy-five years since John Hersey’s reporting on the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing appeared in The New Yorker.

That work would become the acclaimed book Hiroshima.

And fittingly for such a milestone occasion, a librarian at a Illinois school named after Hersey found an incredibly rare copy of that particular issue of The New Yorker.

The August 31, 1946, issue — which came with a band warning of the content — sold out rapidly back in its day, according to The New Yorker.

And copies with the white band are so rare that the author of a book on Hersey and his work had spent three fruitless years searching for one — until the day of her interview with John Hersey High School head librarian Bruce Janu.

Read the full details of this remarkable story in (where else) The New Yorker.

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