|
Leading up to and throughout World War II, the Nazis destroyed more than 100 million books. The idea was that thought could be controlled and subversion to their cause diverted...
...if access to many voices and stories was suppressed.
After the U.S. entered the war, librarians across the country rallied to organize book drives, sending materials to American troops and filling the libraries of newly-built training camps and oversees stations. Publishers and the War Department eventually took over the effort, printing and distributing more than 141 million small paperbacks throughout the war and post-war years, sending to soldiers more than 1,300 distinct titles. These Armed Services Editions (ASEs) fit in a soldier’s pocket and could be read while waiting on a convoy, in a trench, or on a hospital bed. They filled time, they enriched, and these books countered the dangerous censorship imposed by an advancing Third Reich.
Molly Guptill Manning’s excellent When Books Went to War tells of the ASEs: “the lightest weapon” in a war of ideas that men carried with them from North Africa to the Philippines, Normandy to Iwo Jima. She writes,
“Books were intertwined with the values at stake in the war, and Americans would not tolerate any restriction on their reading materials...”
Manning tells us of the wide array of titles, authors, and subjects included, and of the dedication of publishers and the U.S. government to provide reading materials that nourished a range of interests, reading levels, perspectives, and values.
ASEs kept soldiers company, transported them to different lands, and offered respite in traumatic environments. These books conveyed humanity in all its joys and horrors, inviting young men to remember what they fought for and what awaited them when the battles were through.
Books were powerful. Books ARE powerful.
This is why, each year, we select a book to read together. This year’s Winter Read is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which the author wrote one hundred years ago this year. Fitzgerald’s best-known work (but little appreciated in his lifetime) began its surge in popularity as an ASE released in October 1945, after Germany’s surrender but as American troops remained dispersed around the globe, far from home and longing to return.
They read Fitzgerald’s mostly forgotten novel and came home exclaiming this tale of longing and aspiration.
Speaking to more than one hundred Wood River High School students last month as she helped us kick off the 2024 Winter Read, book critic Maureen Corrigan said:
“Reading helps get us out of our situations sometimes.”
She was telling students about the ASEs, but I’m sure those words spoke to their own daily experience, too.
Students asked Corrigan insightful questions, seeking out her love of The Great Gatsby and the novel’s seemingly unending puzzles: Do we know the source of Gatsby’s money? What character would you have lunch with? Was Nick in love with Gatsby? Would Gatsby live better in modern times?
Their questions showed the power of books to evoke curiosity, connection, and wonder, whether we are in a classroom or on the battlefield.
Books are powerful. They invite us into the worlds of others, and perhaps into worlds that make us feel a little less lonely in our own. They make us laugh and reflect and feel connected to other humans, near and far. Books are magic, and through the Winter Read we celebrate reading together and access to stories for all kinds of readers.
| 
