>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Well good afternoon and
welcome to the Library of Congress.
Thank you for coming
inside on a beautiful day
for a program about
books and reading.
I'm John Cole.
I'm the Director of the Center for
the Book in the Library of Congress
which is the part of the
library that's in charge
of reading and literacy promotion.
The Center for the Book was
created by Daniel Boorstin
when he was Librarian
of Congress in 1977.
We are a private, public
endeavor that strives
to stimulate public
interest in books and reading
and literacy and libraries.
We do have support from
the Library of Congress
for our various positions
but we also raise private
money for all of our projects.
Some of our projects are big.
One of them is the National Book
Festival where we have a lot of help
of course from the
library's Development Office,
and a lot of help from the
Library of Congress employees.
This year's festival -- how
many people here have been
to the festival?
A few? Yes.
We've moved inside, off
the mall, two years ago,
and kind of went grudgingly
but now we're very happy.
And we're happy because of the
people who come are happier
with restrooms, air
conditioning, more space,
and as a programming person,
the Center for the Book's
specific responsibilities are
for the Author Program and also
for something called The
Pavilion of the States.
We offer a -- with affiliates in
every state that at the local level,
help us promote books and
reading, and we do have funding
from other agencies to bring
people from all of the states
to the National Book Festival
for the Pavilion of the States
where they spend time
telling visitors what goes
on in their states in the way of
literacy and reading promotion.
I'd learned long ago from our years
on the mall and we started on --
near 2001, when Mrs. Laura
Bush brought us the festival
when her husband had been
elected president and announced
that she wanted to go national
with the Texas Book Festival
which she had created.
And announced, without asking us
very specifically, that she hoped
that the Library of Congress
would be the partner,
which if course was
delightful for us.
And in the early years,
we started with her
and she's really been a
very -- a good friend.
And she was our honorary chair
for the first eight years.
And the Obama's are
now the honorary chairs
in that they do not
participate of course in the way
that Mrs. Bush got us started.
The Center for the
Book has programs here
at the library such
as this book talk.
We film these for the
library's website.
So I'd like to have you turn
off all things electronic.
And finally, before I introduce
the speaker to say a special word
about my interests are the Center
for the Book's interests
in this topic.
Very early on, Dr. Boorstin who was
Librarian of Congress from 1970 -
I never thought I'd forget that -
'75 thru 1987, was intrigued with
and knew about the
Armed Services editions.
And an opportunity came for us
to celebrate the 40th anniversary
of these wonderful books you're
about to learn more about,
and I brought some
examples for you to look
at during our discussion
period later.
They all -- the project celebrated
its 40th anniversary in 1983.
And so we were able to go ahead
and invite back everyone who'd ever
worked on the project, publishers,
military people, to -- for
the celebration, book sellers.
And I also as a young, getting
started in the business,
decided it would be a good idea
to write as many of the authors
who were still alive to ask
what kind of reactions they got.
And of course, since our
business was promoting reading,
we took that promoting
reading angle.
And a book that was published,
which I'm embarrassed to say,
I can't find anymore, was called --
it was about the history of
the Armed Services editions.
And it had led to a number of
other things, but when I learned
about Molly's book,
"When Books Went to War:
The Stories that Helped Us Win
World War II," I said, "Ah ha.
There's someone else whose read
those letters and is going to be
as interested in this topic
and its possible significance
for the future as I am."
And so we are delighted
to have her today, here.
And by final coincidence,
to get ready for the
book festival this year,
the Library of Congress
has a new magazine.
And I have copies for
you as you go out.
And we had the theme "The Joy
of Reading," and tried to talk
about a lot of Library of Congress
projects related to reading.
And much of it has to do with
Center for the Book activities.
And so I was asked of all things to
write a quick summary about books
in action and about the Armed
Services editions, which is nothing
in comparison with Molly's book,
but it's a contemporary summary
of what our symposium was about,
and also has some speculation
about the future.
The way we're going to work this
today is to for Molly to speak
and show her presentation, and
then to take questions and answers
and then I will join her for
part of the question and answer
to help bring up to date - bring
you up to date about a new Library
of Congress literacy
project among other things
for which the Armed
Services editions project has
some significance.
Molly's book, "When
Books Went to War:
The Stories That Helped Us Win
World War II," also has on the back
of it pictures of some of the
books, as are in my article.
And some of the books
which you can see here.
And chatting with Molly earlier,
I said I admired the research
that she's done and how much further
she'd gone than I was able to go
in finding testimonials in
archives and other places
about the importance of these books.
I'll let her tell her story,
but I will introduce her
by actually reading,
since we have just met,
the blurb that's on the book.
I'm a book person all the way.
She's the author of "The Myth
of Ephraim Tutt" and [inaudible]
that she may tell us about,
and several other articles,
appearing in publications
such as the Columbia
Journal of Law and the Arts.
Molly is an attorney for the
United States Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit
in New York City.
I'm going to leave it to her to
tell us how she got interested
in this topic and to give
her a short summary of her --
of her book, through
her presentation.
And then we will open
it up for questions.
So it gives me a great
deal of pleasure
to present Molly Guptill Manning.
Let's give her a hand.
[ Applause ]
>> Molly?
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Thank you.
Hi. Thank you so much
for coming and thank you
for that wonderful introduction.
I am delighted to be speaking
at the Library of Congress.
And I'd like to tell you the
story of "When Books Went to War."
And I'll start as John mentioned,
by telling you how I discovered
this topic, because most historians
of World War II have never heard
about Armed Services editions.
And it's curious how
they've been forgotten
when you see how significant
this program really was.
I was actually doing research for my
first book which is about a lawyer
and author named Arthur Train.
And while I was going
through his archives,
I found these two really thick
folders, filled with letters
from around the world, from
soldiers and sailors and marines.
And they were talking about
how much it meant to them
to read Train's books
while they were at war.
And they mentioned something
called Arms Services editions,
and I had no idea what
they were talking about.
And sometimes they'd refer
to them as being paperbacks,
which really surprised me because
Train's books were published
in the 1940s and earlier,
and paperbacks weren't really
prevalent in the United States.
And I had never seen a paperback
of any of Train's books.
So I started doing some research
about what these books were,
and I actually found a book
that John Cole had edited
about the Armed Services editions.
And the more I learned about this
incredible project, the more I felt
that we should not forget it,
because it's an important
story to remember.
And it really tells us a lot
about how far we've come in terms
of education and literacy
and reading
in the United States since 1940s.
And so, that's how I
discovered the topic and now I'd
like to tell you the story
of how books actually
made it into World War II.
And so this was really
a huge undertaking.
Between the help of librarians and
publishers and military officials,
over 140 million books were
distributed to Americans
who served in World War II.
Since estimates range from 12
to 16 million people who served
in the war, and I think that
includes Red Cross volunteers
and things like that, that's
almost ten books per person,
which is extraordinary.
Now, before we get to the World
War II years, there's an event
that really sparked
this idea of books being
under attack during World War II,
and that was something that occurred
in May of 1933 in Berlin, Germany.
It started in May 10th,
and it was a beautiful --
there was this beautiful parade
where university students led
the public down the streets
by torch light towards
the main plaza
in Berlin, which is the Bebelplatz.
And once the students reached this
town square, there was a giant pile
of logs on the middle, and they
threw their torches onto it
and this bonfire just
burst into flames.
Then the event kind of took a
strange turn, at least in the eyes
of the international community,
when a series of automobiles drove
up along the periphery of the
square, and students formed a line
between the bonfire and the cars.
And one student reached into the
first car and grabbed a book.
He took the book, and he passed it
down to the next person in line,
and the book kept going down the
line until the last student had it,
and then that student threw
the book into the flames.
There were about 20,000
spectators and all of a sudden,
they just burst into cheers.
And this happened for
hours that day,
books just making it down the line.
Some students went into automobiles
and grabbed entire armfuls of books,
and threw them into the fire.
And according to the New
York Times, this continues
until it became a dreary task,
because there were so many books
that needed to make it to the fire.
And it was just taking so long.
This is the picture of the scene
in that square on May 10th, 1933.
This was not the only book
burning that happened that month.
In fact, 93 book burnings happened
across Germany in May of 1933.
When Americans heard about
this, they were outraged.
There was protests in large cities,
50,000 people gathered in New York,
30,000 gathered here
in Washington D.C.,
and they just couldn't
understand why people who lived
in the countries such as
Germany, which prided itself
for its universities
and its intellectualism,
why would they destroy books?
This ended up being
something that continued
for the next several years.
And once war actually
broke out in 1939,
and the German army started
invading other countries like Poland
and Czechoslovakia and France, the
destruction of books continued.
And just to throw out a few
numbers, not too many though.
Three hundred and seventy-five
archives were burned
by the German army, 402 museums were
burned, 531 institutes were burned,
and a staggering 957 libraries
were burned to the ground
by the German army
in Eastern Europe.
By VE Day, over 100 million books
were destroyed across Europe.
So initially, there was outrage in
the United States, but in the 1930s,
we were in the throes of the Great
Depression, and there was a lot
of domestic problems that
caused people to focus more
on what was happening at
home, than the growing menace
that was happening in Germany.
But there was one group of people
who would never forget this,
and that was American librarians.
It wasn't a traditional act of
war to see books being burned,
but they knew that this was
something that -- a sign of danger.
The destruction of ideas,
trying to get rid of ideas
that you don't want people to
think about, and then trying
to reinforce the ideas that you
do want them to think about,
was exactly what Hitler
was trying to do.
And American librarians
recognized that this was something
that needed to be stopped.
The question was just, "How?"
Initially, they didn't
have much of an opportunity
and they'd brainstormed
about this for years.
But their chance to do
something came in 1941.
FDR had announced that we were going
to have the first peacetime
draft in American history.
And this meant that millions
of Americans were going to go
into training camps, and
prepare for defense at first.
We weren't going to war.
And so as people were
drafted into camps,
the only problem was they
couldn't be built fast enough.
And so a lot of soldiers showed
up to areas that looked like this.
They were just tent cities.
And the problem was, a lot
of these training camps were
in the North, and this
was the winter.
And so it was freezing outside.
There was no entertainment.
They went from living in comfortable
homes to living outdoors.
The military hadn't gotten
sufficient supplies yet,
and so people were
using broomsticks,
pretending they were guns.
Automobiles would drive around that
said "tank," had signs that said
"tank" on them, so that the soldiers
would pretend that they were tanks,
and there was just this
huge morale problem
because people didn't
understand why they were training
for military service when first
of all, we weren't at war,
and second of all, the army wasn't
prepared to train them for anything
under these circumstances.
The army realized they
had a serious problem.
If they were going to train people,
and make them into dedicated
soldiers who felt a sense of purpose
about what they were doing, the
soldiers needed to be happy.
In fact, they had a motto that "A
happy solider was a better soldier."
And so they decided that they
needed to provide entertainment,
provide some kind of comfort
under these circumstances.
And they needed something fast.
So what's small, what's
portable, and what's available
in the 1940s for entertainment?
Books. The only problem is, they
didn't have budget to buy books.
You know, if they're struggling to
buy uniforms and build barracks,
they don't exactly have
thousands and thousands of dollars
to spend on reading materials.
And so this is where our American
civilian librarians stepped in.
They saw that there was a need here
and it was something
that they could fill.
And so the Victory
Book Campaign was born.
This was the largest
book drive in history.
Librarians across the United States
came together and they decided
that there were going to host a book
drive, so that they could get books
from the American public, and donate
them to nearby training camps.
And so, beginning in
January of 1942,
on the steps of the New York Public
Library on 42nd Street in Manhattan,
there was a two week campaign
kickoff, and celebrities,
military officials, politicians,
and even popular bands showed
up every day to gather
attention about the campaign,
and to urge people to give.
And each day, these speeches
were broadcast over the radio.
So if you weren't in Manhattan,
you could tune in anywhere
in the United States and hear
what these celebrities had to say
about the importance of books.
The response was overwhelming.
In one day, this was
the book collection
at the 42nd Street
library in Manhattan.
You can see the books are about
as tall as these women are.
Thousands of books were collected
and in New York City alone,
between January and May, 2
million books were collected
from the public.
I mentioned that celebrities
were involved.
Here's Katharine Hepburn,
and after she gave a speech
on the 42nd Street library
steps, she came inside
and she actually donated all of the
books that you see on that table.
She autographed all of them, and
she wrote a message of encouragement
on the inside of the book,
just letting soldiers know
that it meant a lot to her
that they were in the service.
And this was a campaign that
wasn't just run by adults.
Children got involved.
Boy Scouts and Girl
Scouts collected books.
There's one Boy Scout troop in
Illinois who pounded the pavement
from dawn to dusk one day, and they
actually collected 10,000 books.
And so when the public was
asked to give, they gave.
And even F.D.R. was involved
in the Victory Book Campaign.
Librarians wanted to collected
10 million books in 1942,
and in April they were getting
close but they weren't quite there.
And so they wanted to just have
one final push to reach their goal.
And so they asked President
Roosevelt
if he would lend his
support, and he did.
He declared that April 17th,
1942 would be Victory Book Day.
And he gave a stirring speech about
how important books were in wartime.
He talked about the
book burnings in 1933,
and how this was a war of ideas.
Books were under attack and
ideas were under attack.
And he told the public that
they really should read as much
as they could because
by spreading ideas,
they could protest the
destruction of ideas in Europe.
Now F.D.R. was a lover of books.
He collected them.
And this was really something
that felt personal to him.
And so he was really
happy to do his part.
And after he gave this speech,
he had a press conference
which he enjoyed doing, and
one reporter said to him,
"Mr. President, what type of books
should we tell the American public
to give?"
And he responded jokingly,
"Tell them to give
anything but Algebra books."
So with the president's
help, by May of 1942,
10 million books were
collected in 1942.
And the campaign was such a success
that they renewed it in 1943,
and the librarians collected
another eight million books.
The only problem was, the
nature of the war was changing.
When the campaign first started,
America hadn't declared war yet.
And so these books were meant to go
army training camps just to cheer
up the men who were stuck in
the tents and who were miserable
and had nothing else to do.
But when you look at the collections
that the Victory Book
Campaign received,
what do you notice
about all of the books?
[ Inaudible audience response ]
They're all hardcovers.
And they're pretty big, at that.
The problem was, now Americans
were marching across North Africa.
They were carrying all of their
possessions on their back.
If you look carefully, you'll see
most of them have like a bag slung
over their shoulder,
they have their weapon.
In that bag, they carried
everything that they needed
and usually several days'
worth of necessities.
And so they were carrying food
rations, water, a medical kit,
ammunition, any clothing
that they needed.
In North Africa for instance, it
got just unbelievable cold at night,
and so they needed some
kind of blanket or overcoat
or something to stay warm.
As they marched for
miles and miles though,
the weight of the bag was
too much for many of the men.
They'd often stop and
just go through it and see
if there was anything that
they could remove from the bag
to make it a little lighter.
There are even stories of people
taking gas masks out of their bags
and throwing them away, just
to save a little bit of weight.
So as you can imagine,
under these circumstances,
as much as books were wanted and as
desperate as they were for some kind
of entertainment, because as they
say, "War is nine-tenths waiting."
So they might march for many
miles, but then they might wait
for a very long time to get
their next orders of where to go.
They wanted books.
They really did.
They just didn't want
to carry heavy ones.
Librarians had no control over what
type of books were being printed
in the United States, so there
was nothing they could really do
about this problem, but publishers
could do something about this.
As I mentioned before, in
the 1940s, in the 1930s,
paperbacks were not popular
in the United States.
The main thing that prevented them
from being printed
actually, was money.
Publishers and book sellers could
make a lot more money off selling a
$3 hardcover, than
a 25 cent paperback.
And so, the book industry really
didn't want to touch paperbacks.
But as publishers realized
there was this very serious need
to provide books for soldiers,
and there was millions of soldiers
at this point in the American
Army, they decided, "Well,
what if we print books only for
soldiers and sailors and marines,
and what if we shipped
them overseas immediately
so they won't touch
the domestic market?
And that way we can do
our part in the war.
We can serve all of these people
who really want reading materials
and we can give them a book
that is exactly what they need.
We can redesign the book to
fit a serviceman's conditions."
And so that's what they did.
They created the Armed
Services Edition.
They came in two sizes.
The smaller was 3 1/2
by 5 1/2 inches,
and the larger was 4
1/2 by 6 1/2 inches.
And as you can see,
they're really small.
They are in fact, pocket size.
This size actually fit the breast
pocket of a military uniform,
and the larger book was
sized to fit the hip pocket
of the standard issue
military uniform.
So now it wasn't a matter of trying
to fit these things into a backpack.
They could just put
them in their pockets.
Another huge improvement is
that the books were really thin.
Publishers used paper that was
about the thickness of newsprint.
And so instead of having
traditional book paper,
and this is actually the same book.
This is a copy of "The
Tree Grows in Brooklyn,"
you can see the hardcover
is almost twice as thick
as the armed services edition.
So they were just much, much
smaller and much more lightweight
because of the paper
that was being used.
So what happened was each month,
publishers would send 30 books,
then it they were so popular,
it went up to 42 books,
with all different titles
about all different subjects,
so that no matter who was
going to be reading them,
they could find something
that fit their tastes.
And I just want to point out,
our army and navy and marines,
they were educated at
all different levels.
Some went to college.
Some dropped out of high school.
And there was even some people who
learned to read for the first time
through the Army of
Literacy program.
And they achieved a
fourth grade reading level.
And they were the first ones
in their family to do so.
And so these books needed
to fit that huge range
of reading abilities
and reading tastes.
And I just want to show
you some of the examples
of just how wide this range is.
Alongside the person
reading Shakespeare,
could be someone reading
the Sad, Sack Comics.
A history buff might want to read
the Japanese Nation and learn more
about Japan as they
were fighting Japan,
whereas somebody else might want
to just read a Max Brand western.
An incidentally, Dwight
Eisenhower loved reading westerns
to relax during the war.
There were classics like Moby
Dick, and then there were books
like Strange Fruit
which were so indecent
that they were banned in Boston.
And I just want to point out,
you'll notice that Moby Dick is
in rather pristine condition,
whereas Strange Fruit
is falling to pieces.
There was a lot of
requests that went
to publishers asking
to print Strange Fruit.
One person basically said, you
know, "To be frank with you,"
to the publishers, "we want books
with sex scenes and a lot of them."
And Strange Fruit fit the bill.
And so when people learned that
this book had sex scenes and a lot
of them, there were waiting
lists that were formed.
And so you'd write your name down
to be the next person to read it,
and you can see this book
is taped, it is creased.
I mean the pages are
actually falling out.
I have to keep it in a bag most of
the time just to keep it together.
But, no one would throw this book
out because it was still readable.
Now besides books with sex
scenes, there were books
that were really wholesome,
like Lassie Come Home
and Chicken Every Sunday, which I'll
tell you more about in a little bit.
For soldiers who were on the move
and didn't have a lot of free time,
they could grab a book
of short stories,
so they didn't have
to read a whole book.
Or there were books of poetry
like Robert Frost's "Come In."
For sports fans, there were books
about all different sports teams,
including the Chicago Cubs, and
mysteries were really popular
because they were page turners.
And so there were books
like murder within murder.
If you liked nonfiction, there
were books about science like
"Your Servant, the Molecule."
You could read about law
with "Inside the FBI."
And there were also
plenty of biographies.
This one's "Yankee from Olympus"
which is the biography
of Chief Justice Holmes.
If you were into culture books,
there was music and there was art.
Soldier Art is actually
kind of an interesting one
because it had color
images inside of it.
It's the only Armed Services
edition that has that.
And it's containing
obviously artwork by soldiers,
but there was actually
a huge exhibit
in Washington D.C. during the war
that showed all of this artwork.
And it was made into a book.
And then finally, something
that was a hard commodity
to come by at war was laughter.
There were a lot of books
of humor to cheer up the men
when they were facing death
and watching all sorts
of horrific scenes.
So I just want to show you the
inside of the book briefly too,
because they were such a novelty.
You can see the back cover has
just a description of each book.
So is you weren't sure if you
wanted to read that kind of book,
you could just get a quick
glimpse at what it was,
figure out if you wanted it.
What was really novel,
is you'll see the inside
of the book had two columns of text.
Now publishers, I think, went above
and beyond in creating these books,
and I think this is one
example showing how.
They did research and
they discovered
that if you don't have really
good lighting conditions,
it is actually very difficult and
stressful for the eyes to make it
across four or five inches of text.
If you split it up
into two inch columns
or shorter columns,
it's much easier.
And so to give the servicemen's
eyes a break, they had --
every book has these
two columns of texts
so that it would be
easier for the men to read.
And then finally, the
inside back cover
of every Armed Services
edition, listed every book
that was printed that month.
So if you had a favorite author
or if there was some title
that you had heard about that
you really wanted to read,
you could check each month
to see if it came out,
no matter what book you ended up
having, and if it was listed there,
you knew someone in
your unit had it.
So if you were diligent, you could
figure out who it was and get
on that waiting list or
be the next to get it.
And so what I'd like to do now is
tell you about three specific books,
and to tell you the reaction
that the servicemen had to them.
I think that probably one of
the most powerful things for me
in doing the research for this
book, was having the opportunity
to read letters from servicemen,
and hearing their voices back
in the 1940s and what
these books meant to them,
and just what they did for
them while they were at war.
So the first book I want
to tell you about is
"The Education of Hyman Kaplan."
It's by Leo Rosten.
Leonard Ross was his pen name.
And as John mentioned, in
1983, there was a gala here
to celebrate the anniversary
of the Armed Services
editions, and Leo Rosten came.
And he was asked to talk about what
the Armed Services editions meant
to him as an author.
And he ended up saying
that there was one letter
that just really resonated with
him, and kind of just haunted him.
And so even after 40
years, he still felt
that this letter was just
very important to remember.
And so I want to read that to you.
And just so you know
what this book is about,
it's a bunch of short,
humor sketches.
So they're just funny stories.
This is what the letter to him said.
"I want to thank you profoundly
for myself, and more importantly,
for the men here in this God
forsaken part of the globe.
We fry by day, and freeze by night.
What we are doing near the
Persian Gulf, no one knows.
All we have for recreation is a
ping pong set, with one paddle only.
Last week we received
your book on Mr. Kaplan.
I read it and simply
roared with laughter.
As an experiment, I read
it one night by campfire.
The men howled.
I have not heard such
laughs in months.
Now they demand I only read
one Kaplan story a night.
It's our ration on pleasure."
The next month, "Chicken
Every Sunday,"
was one of the books that showed up.
Now this book to me didn't --
initially it didn't
strike me as a book
that would be very popular among men
who were basically
in their twenties.
It's told from the
perspective of a young girl
who watches her mother run this busy
boarding house, and she just kind
of records the comings
and goings of people.
But every Sunday, her mother cooked
a mouthwatering dinner for all
of the boarders in the house.
And they'd all come
together and eat it.
There were all these
descriptions though
of the mother cooking these Sunday
dinners, from chopping green beans
and throwing a pinch of salt
in the, you know, the pot,
just all of those types of details.
And reading those descriptions
made the men absolutely homesick,
missing their mothers, but
they loved that they were
so homesick reading this book
because as one man described,
the war was robbing him
of his memories of home.
He wrote in a letter that
he forgot what it sounded
like to hear the faucet
in his kitchen turn on.
And he forgot what it sounded
like when people walked
up the stairs in his house.
The creaking of the stairs.
And the smell of his parents'
house, he could not remember anymore
and it really bothered him.
But as he read "Chicken
Every Sunday," he had all
of these flashbacks, all these
memories, of what it looked
like when his mom was
cooking Sunday dinner.
And when he heard about you
know, the creaking of the steps
in the boarding house, it made
him think back to the sound
of his own stairs in
his own house creaking.
So getting some of
these memories back
by reading was just absolutely
the most precious thing
that could have happened.
And so Rosemary Taylor received
lots of letters, but I just want
to read one of them --
part of one of them to you.
And one man said to her, "Reading
that book took me home
for a couple of hours.
It alleviated my homesickness.
I really forgot about the
war and laughed and lived
for a little while, back
in that marvelous house,
with all those wonderful people."
And the last book I'm
going to highlight for you,
is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."
Now, it's hard to measure
popularity of books at war
when there was a certain number
of books that were published.
So it's not like people could
buy these books and show
with sales numbers
how popular they were.
But if you measure popularity
by the number of letters
that authors received, Betty Smith,
by far was the most popular author.
In the course of the war, and
after, she received 10,000 letters
from American servicemen.
And what's really extraordinary
about Betty Smith is
that she would write back to people.
And so ended up having these pen
pal relationships with soldiers,
which was really extraordinary.
Now there is so many letters
that it's hard to choose
which one to tell you about.
If you read my book,
the introduction has one
that makes you just feel
like you're going to cry,
but I'm going to tell
you a different story.
There's one man who wrote back and
forth with Betty Smith for a while.
I think he was somewhere in
the Pacific, just based on some
of the descriptions of
what he was going through,
but most letters were censored
and so you couldn't always say
where you were, so I'm not positive.
But he wrote a letter to her.
He had just started reading,
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,"
when his unit got pulled out --
had to pull out and go
to fight in a battle.
And he talks about how he was
certain he was going to die.
The fighting was so fierce,
it just seemed hopeless,
and he didn't think he
was going to make it.
As he was fighting though,
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" just
started to go through is mind.
And just in case you haven't
read it, it's another story told
from the perspective
of a young girl.
She grows up in Brooklyn.
Her family is very poor.
Her father's an alcoholic.
She has a brother.
Her mother seems to prefer
her brother over her.
Tragically, who she loves and
adores, dies when she is young.
Her dream is to go to college
but her mother pulls her
out of high school to become
the breadwinner for the family.
I mean, all of the odds are
stacked against this poor,
young girl, Francie Nolan.
But, she earns a GED.
She ends up going to college.
She makes something of herself,
despite the odds that
were against her.
And at the end of the
book, she goes back
to her old neighborhood in Brooklyn.
In the backyard, there
had been this tree
that was growing when
she was younger.
And the tree was still there.
And the tree is basically
Francie, against all the odds.
There's inadequate soil.
The sunlight didn't
get to this tree.
It's not clear how
much water it got.
But it continued to
grow and flourish.
And so I think that a lot of
men who are reading this book
at war wanted to be like Francie.
They wanted to be like that tree.
They wanted to go against the
odds and survive these battles.
And I think that they got
a lot out of this book,
just showing that they could do it.
And it gave them hope.
And so, this man who was sure he
was going to die, started thinking
about Francie Nolan in the story
of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."
And he survived this battle.
And so he wrote to Betty Smith just
to say thank you for
this powerful book.
And he just said to her, "You
helped inspire me during some
of my most trying days of battle,
and battle fatigue, and depression."
A few months passed, and
he wrote her a second time
because he faced similar
circumstances
where he thought he
was going to die.
And he kept this book with him.
He couldn't give it up because it
was fortifying him through the war.
And it just was his
way of surviving it.
So he thanked her again.
A few months after that, Betty
Smith got her last letter
from this serviceman.
He was writing from
a hospital this time.
He had been wounded in battle.
But he wanted to let her know that
he and his wife had talked it over,
and that they planned to start
a family when he got home.
And if they had a girl, they were
going to name the baby Betty Smith
in honor of the author
who helped him survive.
So these books obviously meant a
great deal to the men who read them.
Between 1943 and 1947,
over 123 million
of these paperback books were
distributed to the Americans
who served in World War II.
And I just want to note, there
are two things that flowed
from this project that were
lasting legacies of the program.
The first thing is the paperback
industry exploded after the war.
Publishers saw that here is
this population of people
who may not ever want
to buy a hardcover book,
but they wanted their paperbacks.
So as these men came home from
the war, they wanted to continue
to have small sized books that
can carry with them anywhere,
and read whenever they wanted.
And so the publishers
heard this call.
And so after the war
-- well, in 1939,
200,000 paperbacks were printed.
By 1947, 95 million were printed.
So the publishers got
over the hardcover bias.
And the second thing is
education was transformed.
The GI Bill of course was
passed during World War II,
and part of that was -- allowed
anyone who was honorably discharged
to get a free college education.
Now, many people had
dropped out of college.
Many people had no desire to
go to college before the war.
But after spending years
reading these books in foxholes,
and in the -- in a ship,
hanging from a hammock at night,
people realized that
they actually kind
of enjoyed doing something
as scholarly as reading.
And they developed confidence
in themselves to be able to read
and go to college and succeed.
And so even though when
Congress passed the GI Bill,
they were skeptical about how
many people would actually go
to college under it.
Over 2 million people ended up
going to college under the GI Bill.
And what's interesting
is some of the authors
of Armed Services editions
were college professors.
And so they have their testaments
of having their classrooms be filled
with GIs because the men had read
the book while they were at war
and developed the respect
for the author professor.
And then the professor was
just in awe of the students
because they were just so amazed
that these people had read the
book, while they were at war.
And of course, soldiers proved
to be incredibly studious
and good students.
And some universities
referred to them
as DARs, Damned Average Raisers.
And so the Armed Services
editions, they weren't --
it wasn't just the wartime project
that was the short lived thing.
It was something that really
transformed American society.
And of course, people who
went to college in the 40s,
wanted their children to go
to college in the 50s and 60s.
And so, college education became
a norm, rather than something
that was just reserved
for the wealthy.
And reading became something
that was just much more prevalent
in the United States, thanks
to the paperback revolution.
So I'm going to stop there.
But I'd be happy to
take any questions
that you may have about the program.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> I think [inaudible] said that
it was [inaudible] publishers
who actually published these books.
It wasn't the government
[inaudible] published them?
>>>> Molly Guptill Manning: No.
>> Or was -- did the government
have some control over the titles?
[Inaudible]
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Yes.
So what happened was
during World War II,
there's obviously paper rationing
so that enough paper could go
to the military and
serve their projects.
So the government actually provided
publishers with paper for the books.
In terms of control over the titles,
there was a three-part
process that they went through.
First, publishers who knew what
bestsellers were being published
that month and who knew what
books might be of interest
to the soldiers, they went
through all of their stock lists,
and they pulled all of the books
that they thought would
be appropriate
for basically men in their twenties.
Those lists would go to
the army and the navy.
And the army and the navy
would them go through
and choose whatever books
they thought would be good
for the men in the army and navy.
And then finally, they would just
come up with lists of 30 to 42 books
that would be published each month.
So the government did have
control over the titles.
For the most part, they didn't
really veto any type of book except
for there was a little
debacle over censorship
when Congress passed the Soldier
Voting Act, which said that books
that had political content couldn't
be distributed to the Armed Forces
on the eve of the 1944 election when
FDR was going for his fourth term.
But publishers fought that even
and they got the law repealed.
So for the most part, books were
published without censorship.
And so publishers would them print
the books and they sold the books
to the army and navy at cost.
So each paper book only costs the
army and navy about five cents.
Yes?
[ Inaudible audience question ]
Sure. Basically, were the books --
you're saying that a lot of the
books appeared to be classics.
And mark--
>> But then it was
hard copies before.
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Right.
[ Inaudible audience question ]
That went direct to
Armed Services editions.
Yes. If a book was a
bestseller, it would be printed
as an Armed Service edition
as quickly as possible.
There were also books that were
made into Armed Services editions
where you couldn't buy a hard cover
version because it didn't exist.
>> Right.
>> Molly Guptill Manning:
And so for instance,
I believe the Robert
Frost book, "Come In,"
I don't think that's an actual
hard cover, but publishers edited
and came up with a list
of Robert Frost poems
that maybe would have
been nice for soldiers
to read while they were away.
And so it was created just for the
Armed Services Edition Program.
Another thing is on the back covers
of the Armed Services editions,
because soldiers might not know
all the current events going
on in the United States, if the
book was being made into a movie,
it would say, "This book's
being made into a movie."
If it was a bestseller,
they would say,
"This is on the Bestseller List."
So, even if the soldiers
wouldn't know that information,
the back cover would let them know.
>> Could you talk a little
about the research process
and how you [inaudible]?
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Sure.
So I found -- oh, how did I find --
what was my research for the project
and how did I find
all of these letters?
So, when I initially did
research about Arthur Train
for my first book, there were
letters in his archival materials
which are housed at
Princeton University,
but those were all geared towards
the book that he published,
which was "Yankee Lawyer."
I was doing some research
to try to figure
out if this program had archives of
its own, and it turns out they did,
which were also housed
at Princeton University.
So, I went through the archives
there and they had boxes of letters
from soldiers to publishers.
But then also, individual
authors received letters.
So then I did some digging into some
individual authors who had archives,
and sure enough, they have
letters in their archives.
So there are actually archives
all over the United States
with these letters
scattered throughout them.
And so that's how I found
most of the letters.
In terms of learning about the
Armed Services Edition Program,
the archives at Princeton
had about 40 boxes
of materials on the entire program.
So that was very helpful.
And it's just hard though to
go through that much material
and process it and try
to figure out, you know,
what's really significant
to talk about
and what maybe should I
not include in the book?
I figured that going
through the budget
of the program wasn't maybe
the most interesting things,
so I [inaudible] skipped
over that except
to note how cheap these
books were published.
Being only five cents a copy
was a very reasonable deal
for the army and navy in the 1940s.
Yes?
[ Inaudible audience question ]
Yes. And there's a scene--
[ Inaudible audience question ]
Right.
[ Inaudible audience question ]
Right. Yes.
There is a movie called "The
Big Red One," and the director
of the movie published an
Armed Services edition.
And so there is a scene
in the movie where one
of the men is reading
the book and one
of the guys says, "What
are you reading?"
And you know, he says,
"I'm reading a book."
And then he said, "I know.
It's my book."
And then he says, "It's
not your book.
I got it over at the, you
know, the book exchange."
Then he said, "No,
I wrote the book."
So yes, it has even made
its way into pop culture.
Not too many references -- there
aren't that many references
to Armed Services editions in
most World War II histories,
but in that particular
movie, and I think it's only
because the director knew it
firsthand, it made its way in.
We have just one more question?
>> I thought I'd pass some of
these out for people to look at.
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Oh yes.
>> [Inaudible] discussion.
[Inaudible]
>> I wanted to ask you about
the distribution of these books?
So the publishers would come
out with 30 or 40 titles.
But how copies would they print?
How would they go about [inaudible]?
>> Molly Guptill Manning:
So initially --
okay, so she was saying 30 to 42
titles were published each month
but how were they actually
distributed?
So initially, each
books had 50,000 copies.
And the idea was for every
unit of 150 men or so,
they would get one
complete set of the books.
So initially, they'd get 30 books.
But then each month, they'd
keep getting 30 books.
And so eventually there'd be
plenty of books for everybody.
It was really popular though, so
after the first couple months,
the army and the navy kept
telling the publishers,
"You have to print more books.
We need more than what
you're doing."
And so they increased to about
70,000 copies of each book.
And then they said,
"We still need more."
And so it went up to 110,000
copies of each book per month.
And so for instance, when "The Great
Gatsby" came out, at that point,
the book was considered
a total failure.
F. Scott Fitzgerald died,
I think in 1939 or 1940,
and his last royalty check
was for $13 for copies
of the book he had
purchased himself.
So, he died thinking that
the book had gone nowhere.
And then a few years
later, 110,000 copies
of "The Great Gatsby" were printed.
Just by have -- I mean that's
a huge number of books,
even by today's standards
for an author, if you sold
or if you have printed 110,000
copies, it would be huge.
But now, people were
reading this book
that everybody had pretty much
forgotten and written off.
And they liked it.
And so they started writing
letters home saying, "You know,
I'm reading 'The Great Gatsby' and
it's interesting and I like it."
And so people at home started
wanting to buy the book.
And so the Armed Services
edition actually revitalized
"The Great Gatsby," and that's
the reason why we even know
about it today.
And so, the sheer number of books
that were printed was really
significant for a lot of authors
and I think it's changed
even our habits today.
And I think "The Great Gatsby"
is one example of a book
that we would not know if it weren't
for the Armed Services
Edition Program.
Yes?
>> Did they have these kinds of
programs in Korea and Vietnam?
>> Molly Guptill Manning:
So for Korea in the 50s,
some Armed Services editions were
still on military bases overseas.
And so they continued to be read to
the extent that they still survived.
I just want to note, the Armed
Services editions were printed till
1947, because for as long as we had
troops that were serving overseas,
publishers wanted to make sure
they had reading material.
So, there were still
Armed Services editions
but they weren't newly printed.
They were from 1947 or earlier.
For Vietnam, there was not an
Armed Services Edition Program,
but books made their
way to some soldiers.
It was hit or miss.
I've been told that there was
some religious organization
that kept printing or kept
sending romance novels,
which seemed like a really odd
thing to send, but I've been told
by several Vietnam veterans
that they actually ended
up developing kind of an affinity
for romance novels while fighting
in Vietnam, simply because
that was the only type of book
that made their way to them.
The only problem was,
Vietnam was very wet.
And so, trying to keep the
books dry, posed a real problem.
[ Inaudible audience response ]
Right. And then in 2000 or so,
for people serving in Iraq,
Andrew Carroll started printing
Armed Services editions again.
I think there's about ten
titles that were printed.
Do you want to speak more about it?
>> I'll say a word about it.
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Okay.
>> Andrew Carroll is an
entrepreneur and a friend
of the Center for the Books.
And had the idea after learning
about the Armed Services editions
to try to do this for
troops in Afghanistan.
It was after Vietnam.
And about ten of these, he
did print and they did it
in the same format, but
these are new books.
And of course, they chose
books, actually in this case,
you talk about your contrasts Molly,
so this is "This is the Art of War,"
[inaudible], but then suddenly
is by a good friend of Andrew's,
Christopher Buckley, "Wry Martinis."
And so again, the range
of oh, was considerable.
That project now has
kind of fizzled,
but we do have examples of about 15.
And he also published
one that was much thicker
in the upright position.
So you know, when these were
printed as Molly was saying,
they were printed like
on a newspaper press.
And so it cut down on the cost and
made them much more distributable
in many, many different ways.
I'll just add a footnote.
There is an afterlife to
some of these projects.
As I mentioned the introduction,
we did a program in 1984,
bringing back a lot of the
publishers and the military people
by the way who worked
on the selection.
And a person who did it for
the navy was still alive
in 1984 when we did this.
And she described a little
bit more like Molly just did
about the process and how in fact
there was very little censorship
but there was really an agreement in
trying to get as many of these out.
Then the University of
Virginia, after, did an exhibit
at the University of Virginia,
called "Books go to War."
And they printed up their catalogs
about the Armed Services editions.
And in this one, the curator
used a lot of the letters
that I had written
earlier in 1984 to authors.
And that turned out to be a
wonderful experience for the Center
for the Book because this is how I
first met Herman Wouk and a number
of others who corresponded and
write back their impressions of --
and along the same lines that Molly.
I had never heard Molly's
Betty Smith story.
I mean that's a wonderful example
of voluminous continuing,
you know, working ahead.
Then finally, Daniel
Boorstin, when he was Librarian
of Congress was the one who had
the idea of the 1984 reunion
of everybody who'd every worked on
this project to come to the Library
of Congress which is how I
met a number of these people.
But Dr. Boorstin then, who was
-- in his report to Congress,
called "Books in our Future," which
was 1987, kind of the first foray
of looking on -- looking
towards the electronic age,
came back to describe the
Armed Services editions.
And we have a picture in the
book which I couldn't find
of the cover that's
on my particular book.
And these are posed pictures
of soldiers in hospital beds
with legs up, you know,
in splints, reading books.
Reading the Armed Services editions.
And he called for a revitalization
in his book, his report to Congress,
taking the old Armed
Services editions idea.
And it turned out to be kind
of the beginning in some ways,
of the Center for the
Book's partnership program,
because we got involved
with organizations
that were involved
in book distribution.
So in a sense, the project
does live and I just learned
from Molly earlier, and I
didn't realize this at all --
do you want to tell
the literacy story?
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Sure.
>> Because I was telling
her about the new Library
of Congress Literacy
Awards and she had a story
for me that I should know.
>> Molly Guptill Manning:
So during World War II,
as people were being drafted into
the services, one requirement is
that you had to be able to read
on a 4th grade reading level.
If you couldn't you were rejected.
And so the army ended up rejecting
almost half a million people
because they couldn't read.
Then the army realized,
these are able bodied people
who are capable of fighting.
Why don't we just teach
them to read?
And so the army started
this huge literacy program
and they called back the 500,000
people that they had rejected,
and they taught them how to read.
And so there were all of these
letters that started coming
into the army, some of which you
could barely read, because they were
from the families of the
people who learned how to read.
And some of them said, you know, "So
and so asked me to write this letter
on their behalf, and they just
wanted to tell you that so
and so is the first
person in their family
that ever learned how to read."
And it was changing lives, just
being able to have that skill.
And they thought it was
just the best thing ever.
And so, the army had a
significant literacy program.
And I think you know, to think
that 500,000 people were rejected
for military service in the
40s because they couldn't read
at a fourth grade level,
and they had to be initially
at least 21 years old,
I think that shows you
that there was a major literacy
problem in the United states then.
But I think it's important
to remember
that literacy is still
a problem today.
And I don't know if the army
still has a literacy program.
>> I'm going to find out.
>> Molly Guptill Manning: Yes.
>> Let's -- we're going to have
a book signing now out back,
and you'll be able to purchase
Molly's book and get her to sign it.
And also, as I said earlier,
we are distributing free copies
of the new Library of Congress
Magazine which talks about the joy
of reading, and it does
include a quick summary
of the Armed Services editions
that summarize some of the facts
that Molly has just talked about.
But first of all, why don't you --
let's join hands to thank
Molly for a wonderful job.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at www.Loc.gov.