In the 'biggest book giveaway in history' WWII soldiers received pocket-sized reads [View all]

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In the 'biggest book giveaway in history' WWII soldiers received pocket-sized reads

Maureen Corrigan
MAY 25, 2026 at 2:00 AM

When I was growing up, many of the dads in my neighborhood had served in World War II. True to stereotype, none of them talked much about the war. Information came sideways.

My best friend's dad, who'd been in the Air Force in China, taught us to how say "hot water" in Mandarin. Another dad, an Army vet, let slip that he'd burned his uniform upon returning home, which puzzled us. And my own dad, a Navy vet, once said something about the "funny paperbacks" around during the war.

It wasn't until I began researching my book on The Great Gatsby that I realized my father had been one of the millions of servicemen on the receiving end of what's been called the "biggest book giveaway in history."

When the U.S. entered World War II, there was an effort to get books into the hands of servicemen to combat boredom. The books, though, had to be light and small enough to fit in servicemen's pockets. That was only one of the challenges faced by a group of publishers, librarians and booksellers who composed the Council on Books in Wartime.

The distribution program the Council eventually adopted stood in contrast to the Nazi book burnings that began in 1933. The motto of the Council on Books in Wartime was: "Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas." America would initiate a program for servicemen that would implicitly affirm the freedom to read widely.

… more … Col. Ray Trautman is the hero of this story. In a terrific forthcoming book called A Librarian's War, coming out in September, Molly Guptill Manning details how Trautman came up with the idea of not just distributing books for the troops, but producing them …123 million books …

… cowboy stories, Tarzan tales and suspense fiction. Forever Amber, a steamy historical romance by Kathleen Winsor, was especially popular. But among the 1,322 titles produced during the lifetime of the ASEs were Moby Dick, biographies of Frederick Douglass and Queen Victoria, essays by Lincoln and Emerson, and poetry collections by Longfellow, Keats and Edna St. Vincent Millay.…

Attempted bans: Manning quotes one soldier's letter that says: "It will be recalled that Mr. Hitler got his start by banning and burning books with which he, in his wisdom, did not agree." Widespread pushback triumphed and soldier's freedom to read prevailed.

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Only complete collection

https://guides.loc.gov/armed-services-editions-collection

Armed Services Editions Collection at the Library of Congress
Armed Services Editions (ASEs) were specially-designed paperback books sent to troops during World War II. This guide provides an overview and links to resources for researching this complete collection in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

(Grieving our lost America.)