When Books Went to War

The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II

Molly Guptill Manning

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2014
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544535176
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a "cultural history that does much to explain modern America" ( USA Today).
When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million specially printed paperbacks designed for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war.

These small, lightweight Armed Services Editions 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. This pioneering project not only listed soldiers' spirits, but also helped rescue  The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon.

"A thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and often uplifting account . . . I was enthralled and moved." — Tim O'Brien, author of  The Things They Carried
"Whether or not you're a book lover, you'll be moved." —  Entertainment Weekly

Appendix B

Armed Services Editions

A-Series, September 1943

A-1 Leonard Q. Ross, The Education of Hyman Kaplan

A-2 Joseph C. Grew, Report from Tokyo

A-3 Ogden Nash, Good Intentions

A-4 Kathryn Forbes, Mama’s Bank Account

A-5 Robert Carse, There Go the Ships

A-6 Rose C. Feld, Sophie Halenczik, American

A-7 Theodore Pratt, Mr. Winkle Goes to War

A-8 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

A-9 John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat

A-10 John R. Tunis, World Series

A-11 James Thurber, My World and Welcome to It

A-12 Frank Gruber, Peace Marshal

A-13 H. L. Mencken, Heathen Days

A-14 C. S. Forester, The Ship

A-15 William Saroyan, The Human Comedy

A-16 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars

A-17 John Bartlett Brebner and Allan Nevins, The Making of Modern Britain

A-18 Philip K. Hitti, The Arabs

A-19 Howard Fast, The Unvanquished

A-20 Albert Q. Maisel, Miracles of Military Medicine

A-21 Herbert Agar, A Time for Greatness

A-22 Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

A-23 Max Herzberg, Merrill Paine, and Austin Works, eds., Happy Landings

A-24 Herman Melville, Typee

A-25 Rackham Holt, George Washington Carver

A-26 Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

A-27 Carl Sandburg, Storm over the Land

A-28 Hervey Allen, Action at Aquila

A-29 Ethel Vance, Reprisal

A-30 Jack Goodman, The Fireside Book of Dog Stories

B-Series, October 1943

B-31 R. W. Lane, Let the Hurricane Roar

B-32 Fred Herman, Dynamite Cargo

B-33 Robert Frost, Come In, and Other Poems

B-34 Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

B-35 Mary Lasswell, Suds In Your Eye

B-36 Peter Field, Fight for Powder Valley!

B-37 Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

B-38 MacKinlay Kantor, Gentle Annie

B-39 R. Benchley, Benchley Beside Himself

B-40 William Sloane, To Walk the Night

B-41 Edmund Gilligan, The Gaunt Woman

B-42 Alan LeMay, Winter Range

B-43 Arthur Henry Gooden, Painted Buttes

B-44 Rosemary Taylor, Chicken Every Sunday

B-45 P. Lowe, Father and Glorious Descendant

B-46 H. Allen Smith, Life in a Putty Knife Factory

B-47 Archie Binns, Lightship

B-48 Hartzell Spence, Get Thee Behind Me

B-49 Mary O’ Hara, My Friend Flicka

B-50 Henry C. Cassidy, Moscow Dateline

B-51 Dorothy Macardle, The Uninvited

B-52 Walter D. Edmonds, Rome Haul

B-53 Struthers Burt, Powder River

B-54 Louis Adamic, The Native’s Return

B-55 Majorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

B-56 Stefan Heym, Hostages

B-57 Hubert Herring, Good Neighbors

B-58 Merrill Denison, Klondike Mike

B-59 Marcus Goodrich, Delilah

B-60 Peter Freuchen, Arctic Adventure

C-Series, November 1943

C-61 Alan H. Brodrick, North Africa

C-62 Conrad Richter, The Sea of Grass

C-63 J. H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making

C-64 Voltaire, Candide

C-65 Stewart Edward White, The Forest

C-66 Nelson C. Nye, Pistols for Hire

C-67 Max Beerbohm, Seven Men

C-68 Vereen Bell, Swamp Water

C-69 Charles Courtney, Unlocking Adventure

C-70 Booth Tarkington, Penrod

C-71 W. H. Hudson, Green Mansions

C-72 Clarence E. Mulford, Hopalong Cassidy Serves a Writ

C-73 Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy

C-74 D...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Frontispiece
• Introduction
• A Phoenix Will Rise
• $85 Worth of Clothes, but No Pajamas
• A Landslide of Books
• New Weapons in the War of Ideas
• Grab a Book, Joe, and Keep Goin’
• Guts, Valor, and Extreme Bravery
• Like Rain in the Desert
• Censorship and FDR’s F - - - th T - - m
• Photos
• Germany’s Surrender and the Godforsaken Islands
• Peace at Last
• Damned Average Raisers
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Banned Books
• Armed Services Editions
• Notes
• Index
• Illustration Credits
• About the Author