WWII and Mass Market Paperbacks

This fascinating bit of news over at Tea at Trianon hit all the right spots... The WWII history, books, and an idea that changed the publishing industry.

From the WSJ article:

A decade after the Nazis’ 1933 book burnings, the U.S. War Department and the publishing industry did the opposite, printing 120 million miniature, lightweight paperbacks for U.S. troops to carry in their pockets across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.


The books were Armed Services Editions, printed by a coalition of publishers with
funding from the government and shipped by the Army and Navy. The largest of them were only three-quarters of an inch thick—thin enough to fit in the pocket of a soldier’s pants. Soldiers read them on transport ships, in camps and in foxholes. Wounded and waiting for medics, men turned to them on Omaha Beach, propped against the base of the cliffs. Others were buried with a book tucked in a pocket.


“When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II” by Molly
Guptill Manning tells the story of the Armed Services Editions. To be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on Dec. 2, the book reveals how the special editions sparked correspondence between soldiers and authors, lifted “The Great Gatsby” from obscurity, and created a new audience of readers back home.

For the link to the full WSJ article or a longer excerpt, go check out Elena Maria Vidal's post over at Tea at Trianon.

Tea at Trianon: Paperback Books and the War Effort

Banned Books

Banned Books Week was last week, and often it's presented as the enlightened looking back on a more ignorant age. Not so. The totalitarian mindset is alive and well. A California charter school recently banned The Hiding Place, the story of Corrie ten Boom and her family hiding Jews during WWII. The problem? The ten Boom's were Christians, and they were audacious enough to pray and share their faith while in a concentration camp. This has caused a minor dust up in the blogosphere, but what is most appalling is the ignorance, and an unwillingness to read the book in question by someone who is reportedly a librarian. The quote below is from a Library Journal blogger:

I was unfamiliar with Corrie ten Boom or her book The Hiding Place, but if the Wikipedia entries are accurate, it does seem like the book is pretty Christian. Supposedly, the entire time she and her sister were in a German concentration camp, they “used a hidden Bible to teach their fellow prisoners about Jesus,” because not enough people had told the Jewish prisoners that they were wrong to be Jewish.

Really? Never mind that  the ten Boom's are honored with the title "Righteous Gentiles" by Yad Vashem. The same title was given to Oskar Schindler of "Schindler's List" fame. The Holocaust was horrific, and should never be forgotten. Simply stating that the kids should read The Diary of Anne Frank instead is a cop out. Six million people died during that time period; we need more than one first person account.

It's hard to tell exactly what happened at the school, because it appears that the "eye witness" accounts are anonymous at the moment. Details of the case can be found here.

Before I get accused of being a "right wing hater" let me just say that I know conservatives have done similar things. The argument "they do it too!" is flawed. Sure, I haven't written about right wing ridiculousness, but the blog is young.