How the Armed Services Editions Created a Nation of Readers -
"There was laughter coming from the foxhole between bursts of the Germans’ anti-tank guns. The American servicemen were in a tight position, pinned by the Boche, but they’d made it to an interesting part of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith and everyone knows how hard it is to put down a good book. The novel—being read out loud by one of the men—kept their spirits up even as they fought for their lives.
This was just one of thousands of stories from soldiers, foreign correspondents and military leaders that flooded into the Council on Books in Wartime praising the Armed Services Editions—lightweight paperba cks that were sent to the boys overseas during World War II. The audacious and revolutionary project became one of the Army’s best morale boosters, offering a bit of light during those dark days. It also helped shepherd in an era of paperback supremacy and create millions of voracious readers in the process.
Long before the Armed Services Editions were even a gleam in their creator’s eye, Hitler and the Nazis made books a cornerstone of their strategy in their march toward total power. The book burnings in Berlin—an event that is now indelibly tied to the death of democracy and the birth of fascism—were just a start. The Nazis went on to ban voices that could undermine their message; plunder vast research libraries to better understand “the enemy;” create a national book club that distributed Nazi-approved reading selections; and gift Hitler’s manifesto to every newly married couple in the country.
Books had become weapons in the war before there even was one."
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