Armed Services Editions

 Books For The Troops

   During World War II, the Council on Books in Wartime in the U.S. established a non-profit program to get books into the hands and pockets of the troops scattered throughout the world. The books produced were very small paper ones, but they were complete not abridged. About 123 million copies of around 1300 titles were published and distributed.
   As the image indicates, the books could be classic or popular ones, fictional or non-fictional and serious or humorous. They were useful for bored soldiers in remote outposts, for sailors on long voyages and for both when convalescing in hospitals. They also promoted reading and ended up contributing to the paperback revolution for civilians.

   Much has been written about the ASE and the major sources for information are provided below for those interested in books and for those  interested in collecting them.

The Grolier Club Exhibition
  Titled, "The Best Read Army In the World" and curated by Molly Guptill Manning, this exhibition and the Wikipedia entry will be enough for many of you. For an article about it see: "A New Exhibition Tells the Story of the Armed Services Editions, Pocket-size Paperback Weapons in the Fight For Democracy," Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, Oct. 6, 2023.

Related Books by Manning
   The Best-Read Army in the World, Molly Guptill Manning and Brian Anderson, The University of Chicago Press, 2020
"In late 1943, small packages bound in sturdy brown paper began to arrive at American military outposts, each containing a set of ingenious pocket-sized books called the Armed Services Editions. Titled the “Victory Book Campaign,” this initiative was led by librarians, who garnered the support of individuals, businesses, civic organizations, and Eleanor Roosevelt. For war-weary, homesick men, these books—fiction, biographies, classics, sports tales, history books, poetry, compilations of short stories, books of humor—represented the greatest gift the military could give them. This annotated catalogue includes posters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other contemporary documents that provide valuable context for how the written word not only increased morale during wartime but ultimately transformed American education and changed the book industry forever."

   When Books Went To War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II. Molly Guptill Manning, HarperCollins, 2014
"When America entered World War II in 1941, [it] faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks, for troops to carry in their pockets and their rucksacks, in every theater of war. Comprising 1,200 different titles of every imaginable type, these paperbacks were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy; in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific; in field hospitals; and on long bombing flights. They wrote to the authors, many of whom responded to every letter. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity. They made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. When Books Went to War is an inspiring story for history buffs and book lovers alike."--Publisher's website. Chronicles the joint effort of the U.S. government, the publishing industry, and the nation's librarians to boost troop morale during World War II by shipping more than one hundred million books to the front lines for soldiers to read during what little downtime they had.
  For a review see: "Marching Off to War, With Books," Janet Maslin, NYT, Dec. 24, 2014.
  Manning has a new book out: The War of Words: How America's GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II, Blackstone, 2023.

Library Collections
  Small paperback books, such as the ASE ones would not have been routinely collected, but interest in having them developed later.

The Library of Congress has a full set, of course, and published this on the 40th anniversary of the ASE: Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions, by John Y. Cole, 1984. (This can be accessed online, but it may take a while to load.)

The Huntington Library
  "Fighting A War With Books," Natalie Russell, Verso: The Blog of the Huntington Library, May 22, 2019.

University of Alabama: The W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library
  The ASE collection here is almost complete and was lacking only five titles when this was written in 2015: “Armed Services Editions: A Quest For A Complete Collection,” Allyson Holliday, UofA Blog, Feb 16, 2015.

University of South Carolina - The Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections Blog
"Books are Weapons in the War of Ideas..." Michael Weisenburg, Sept. 4, 2020
"The Irvin Department is pleased to announce that it has recently acquired the three final titles needed to complete its collection of the Armed Services Editions series of books. The books, Peter Field’s Fight for Powder Valley, William Colt MacDonald’s Master of the Mesa, and Clarence E. Mulford’s Hopalog Cassidy’s Protégé, are part of a series produced by the Council on Books in Wartime, from 1943 to 1947."

The University of Virginia
  "Books Enlist." This provides an exhibit of the ASE held in 1996.

Blogs

  This is worth a look: "Books For Victory: The Armed Services Editions of WWII," Andrew Brozyna, April 28, 2013.

  For Collectors: The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America.

Another Attempt In This Century - 2002
  See:" Literature Re-enlists In the Military; Pilot Project Is Sending Books to American Ships And Troops Abroad," by Mel Gussow, NYT, Nov. 7, 2002

   "During World War II soldiers carried Armed Services Editions of pocket-size books and read them avidly whenever they had time. These were literary classics, popular novels, plays and nonfiction issued free to troops around the world. The books, increasingly dog-eared, were a cultural oasis as well as entertainment. Some soldiers took them into battle. Copies were handed out as troops left England for the Normandy invasion....
   Andrew Carroll, an author and archivist, described the program as ''the biggest giveaway of books in our history'' with the possible exception of Gideon Bibles. It is, he said, ''a great forgotten story'' of World War II. After the war the editions were at least partly responsible for the proliferation of paperbacks in the United States.

   This month, in a pilot project created by Mr. Carroll, the Armed Services Editions are returning with 100,000 copies of new versions of four books being printed in the same wide, brightly colored ''cargo pocket'' format: Shakespeare's ''Henry V,'' ''The Art of War'' (Sun Tzu's classic 500 B.C. study of military strategies) and two recent best sellers, ''Medal of Honor: Profiles of America's Military Heroes From the Civil War to the Present'' by Allen Mikaelian, with commentary by Mike Wallace, and ''War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars,'' edited by Mr. Carroll....

   Clarence Strowbridge, president of Dover, which is publishing ''Henry V'' and ''The Art of War,'' said that the original editions ''inspired a whole generation of servicemen and women to become lifelong readers, and I have no doubt these books will do the same.'' After the war Dover became a leader in the paperback revolution....

   Mr. Carroll first became aware of the editions four or five years ago when he found a Steinbeck novel in an antiquarian bookstore in California. He soon began his own collection, which includes a rare copy of ''Superman,'' a novel, not a comic book.

Echoing his predecessors during World War II, Mr. Carroll said he wanted ''to promote the love of reading.'' He was adamant about using the original format as an act of nostalgia and ''a tip of the hat to this great project.'

CANCON
   Three books by Stephen Leacock are found listed by the ASE: 1) Laugh With Leacock #197; 2) Happy Stories Just to Laugh #344 and 3) My Remarkable Uncle: and Other Stories #976.

   One reason I became aware of the ASE is through the research I did for my book about Hulbert Footner who was born in Hamilton, Ontario. His book, The Murder That Had Everything was chosen for the ASE. I could find no pictures of the ASE version and that edition of the novel is  probably rare. One likely exists in the collection held in the Calvert County Historical Collection in Prince Frederick, Maryland. Here are two reviews of it:

The Murder That Had Everything

Here is a review from The Observer, by Maurice Richardson, Sept. 17, 1939.

“The Crime Ration”

The Murder That Has Everything has an extremely New York setting. Chief victim is a gigolo on the eve of his marriage to one of the richest and silliest girls in the world. Suspects include the husbands of several women who have been visiting him in his love nest. Lee Mappin and his beautiful secretaries do the detecting. The plot becomes trickier and muddier with every page; there is some interesting characterisation and strong satire at the expense of New York smarties and gossip writers. In fact it has everything to make you go on reading.

A Canadian review is found in the Vancouver Sun, Sept. 2, 1939.

“Mystery Fiction”

Park Avenue society, familiar to New York haunts and true-to-life habitues combine to make Hulbert Footner’s new mystery, The Murder That Has Everything (Musson), an A1 Thriller. Here’s the story of a cunning crime syndicate that plies among the daughters of millionaires.