Review by New York Times Review
"FROM THE AIRBORNE INFANTRY of the front lines to the chair-borne Finance Corps of the rear," an American soldier observed from an English hospital in the midst of World War II, "you can find the boys reading as they never have before." He was referring to the ubiquitous presence, among troops stationed abroad, of Armed Services Editions, or A.S.E.s: disposable pocket-size paperback reprints of a wide range of current and classic titles paid for by the United States government and produced by a consortium of the nation's publishers. The editions, as the soldier's remark suggests, met the demand for print among American military personnel overseas while opening up possibilities for greater consumption of books in the postwar period. In "When Books Went to War," Molly Guptill Manning recounts the story of A.S.E.S. The volumes grew out of the Victory Book Campaigns that the American Library Association sponsored in the early 1940s to collect and send to servicemen books donated by the public. The mixed success of that undertaking impelled the Army and Navy to find a better way to supply troops with reading matter. Meanwhile, publishing industry leaders were pondering how best to mobilize for the war effort. Adopting the slogan "Books are weapons in the war of ideas," they formed the nonprofit Council on Books in Wartime, dedicated to the belief that the dissemination of serious books (or at least the promotion of reading) could help counteract the Nazi assault on freedom. In 1943, the council devised its A.S.E. plan, relying on rotary presses used for magazines to generate nearly 123 million copies of 1,322 works over the next four years. Manning surveys the production process and the oblong, stapled (and now collectible) books that resulted from it. She likewise mentions the more popular titles the program distributed, from Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" to Rosemary Taylor's "Chicken Every Sunday." An appendix lists all the titles. But Manning, a writer and an attorney, is most interested in sketching - in broad strokes - the experience of reading on the battlefield or aboard a troop ship. Drawing on servicemen's letters, she notes that war can be boring as well as hellish; A.S.E.s were diversions from death, antidotes to fear and reminders of home. A sentence in her chapter on D-Day captures, on one hand, Manning's laudable appreciation for the hardships of combat and, on the other, the unanalytical quality that pervades her book: "Thank God for the A.S.E.s." By the same token, Manning is not concerned with the deeper issues embedded in the history of the project. One of these, as the scholars John Hench, Christopher P. Loss and Trysh Travis have all shown, involves the way the council helped redefine the publishing industry as a liberal public servant at the same time it spurred the development of new markets. Another is the tension between the avowed aim of some publishers to stimulate the "intellectual interests of the American soldier" and the military's desire to furnish recreational reading - in other words, the editions make us ask whether literary standards can be compatible with mass culture, and who sets those standards. A third, admittedly difficult line of inquiry is whether veterans who continued reading at home did so with the same preferences and expectations they had developed overseas. Discontinued in 1947, A.S.E.s made a brief reappearance beginning in 2002 through the writer and editor Andrew Carroll's Legacy Project. Military libraries currently send print and audio books to deployed service members, who can access digital collections as well. Civilian groups also mail used books to troops. But the ambitious collaboration between the government and publishers that distinguished A.S.E.s in World War II has no parallel today. Even so, the value of Armed Services Editions lies less in the price they bring on eBay or the nostalgia they evoke than in what they can reveal about the ideological, economic and therapeutic dimensions of American publishing and reading in the mid-20th century. JOAN SHELLEY RUBIN, the Dexter Perkins professor in history at the University of Rochester, is a co-editor of "The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 25, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Books mattered. As war machines rolled across Europe after 1939, Nazis shuttered libraries and burned books they deemed objectionable because of authorship or content. Then the U.S. began its own mobilization, early conscripts training with broomsticks for rifles. America's industry eventually supplied requisite war matériel, but soldiers and sailors needed weapons capable of fighting combat's psychological and spiritual stresses. Under the leadership of redoubtable librarian Althea Warren, the Victory Book Campaign rallied the nation's libraries, publishers, booksellers, and ordinary citizens, marshaling millions of volumes to send to front lines. Magazine publishers ran off issues on lightweight newsprint that could similarly be carried into foxholes. Manning has scoured archives to retrieve soldiers' touching accounts of the therapeutic, life-saving influence of stories that took their minds away from daily horrors. Servicemen loved these flimsy paperbacks, which they could slip into pockets and trade with one another. She also reports a less-savory tale of American politicians conniving to censor some titles. Includes bibliography of books published as Armed Services Editions and a partial list of authors the Nazis tried to suppress.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Supplying American soldiers with reading material has long been a modest priority, but nothing compares to the massive, WWII operation that sent over 140 million books to U.S. troops. Manning (The Myth of Ephraim Tutt), an attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals, begins this delightful history of a little-known aspect of the war in 1940, with America scrambling to build an army from scratch. Officers responsible for morale noticed that post libraries showed "circulation rates so staggering that it was a wonder the print had not been wiped clean from the pages." Grassroots campaigns produced an avalanche of donations, mostly hardcovers, appropriate for libraries but hopelessly bulky for a frontline soldier. In 1942, publishers put their heads together and Manning delivers an engrossing story of the result: a compact paperback designed to fit into a soldier's pocket. This legendary Armed Services Edition became "the most significant project in publishing history." Over 1,300 titles poured overseas to an enthusiastic reception, and "there was a book for every taste, whether a man preferred Sad Sack comics or Plato." The usual Congressional diehards aside, censorship was minimal. Manning's entertaining account will have readers nostalgic for that seemingly distant era when books were high priority. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Manning (The Myth of Ephraim Tutt) here presents a marvelous story of the Armed Services Editions (ASE) of books that were distributed to GIs during World War II. The ASE plan ultimately gave away, between 1943 and 1947, nearly 123 million copies of 1,322 works. These special editions were smaller paperbacks that could be tucked in a pocket or folded inside a backpack. Manning's fascinating history covers the impact on the world of Nazi book burning, details of the inner workings of the national contribution to this important war effort, and interesting aspects of how the campaign was organized and operated. The author includes many excerpts from GI diaries and letters demonstrating how much it meant to the men to receive one of the books. Bernadette Dunne's solid, energetic reading nicely varies in the conveying of the personal anecdotes and sustains listener interest throughout. -VERDICT Manning's work is a shining testament that provides for book lovers an informative account of how reading literally saved the sanity of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Note that the print edition contains an appendix of all the titles distributed during the war, which is lacking here. ["Highly readable and extremely appealing, this book is perfect for any bibliophile or historians interested in the stories from the home front," read the review of the Houghton Harcourt hc, LJ 11/15/14.]-Dale Farris, Groves, TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
How books raised spirits during World War II.In 1941, the American Army faced the challenge of training hastily convened troops and amassing basic supplies to wage an extensive war in Europe. Soon, the Army discovered another serious challenge: low morale. Far from home, cut off from family and friends, fearful and stressed, the new conscripts longed for distraction. "What the Army needed," writes attorney Manning (The Myth of Ephraim Tutt: Arthur Train and His Great Literary Hoax, 2012) in this intriguing history, "was some form of recreation that was small, popular, and affordable. It needed books." Financial straits made buying books impossible, so librarians volunteered to mount a book drive. In the first two years, the Victory Book Campaign received 6.6 million volumes, not all appropriate for young men. Knitting books and children's literature, for example, were sent elsewhere or pulped. Despite complaints that hardcover books were too large and heavy to carry, books proved so popular that the Army decided to take over, establishing the Council on Books in Wartime. Its first project was publishing 50,000 copies each of 50 titles in small, lightweight paperback editions. A staff of readers made recommendations, and the council noted any that might "give aid and comfort to the enemy, conflict with the spirit of American democracy, or be offensive to any religious or racial groups, trades, or professions." Despite these guidelines, more than 1,200 selections were sent to soldiers and Navy men, including novels (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a great favorite), mysteries, Westerns, adventure stories, biographies, poetry and a host of other genres. Manning includes a book list as an appendix. Many soldiers were so moved by what they read that they started a correspondence with authors; for some soldiers, the books were their first introduction to literature of any kind and inspired their enrollment in higher education, supported by the GI Bill, after the war. A fresh perspective on the trials of war and the power of books. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
