Armed Services Editions

Armed Services Editions (ASEs) were small paperback books of fiction and nonfiction that were distributed in the American military during World War II. From 1943 to 1947, some 122 million copies of more than 1,300 ASE titles were distributed to service members, with whom they were enormously popular. The ASEs were edited and printed by the Council on Books in Wartime (CBW), an American non-profit organization, in order to provide entertainment to soldiers serving overseas, while also educating them about political, historical, and military issues. The slogan of the CBW was: "Books are weapons in the war of ideas."

After the draft was reinstated in the U.S. in 1940, millions of young soldiers found themselves in barracks and training camps, where they were often bored. The head of the Army's Library Section, Raymond L. Trautman, sought to remedy this by purchasing one book per soldier, but when that failed, librarians launched a nationwide book collection campaign. This "Victory Book Campaign" collected a million books in its first month, but its efforts dropped off when the Army rejected many of the donated books as unsuitable for soldiers, and the bulky hardcovers were found to be unsuitable for use in the field. The campaign ended in 1943.

In that year, in collaboration with the graphic artist H. Stanley Thompson and the publisher and CWB executive Malcolm Johnson, Trautman proposed his idea of "Armed Services Editions": mass-produced paperbacks selected by a panel of literary experts from among classics, bestsellers, humor books and poetry. The support of William Warder Norton, chairman of the CWB's executive committee and president of the publishing house W. W. Norton, was instrumental for the project to be realized. Apart from the Army and Navy (through chief librarian Isabel DuBois), over seventy publishers and a dozen printing houses collaborated on the ASEs. To appease some publishers' concerns, a legal commitment was made that prevented the domestic distribution and post-war resale of surplus books, and educational and scientific books were excluded.

The CBW appointed Philip Van Doren Stern, a printing expert and former Pocket Books executive, as project manager. The volunteer advisory panel that selected the books comprised notable figures from publishing and literature. Its initial members were John C. Farrar, William M. Sloane, Jeanne Flexner, Nicholas Wreden, Mark Van Doren, Amy Loveman and Harry Hansen. The panel met twice weekly, selecting publications from among the publishers' suggestions. It aimed at publishing 50 books per month, but soon reduced that goal to 30. The panel mainly focused on selecting recreational reading material, both fiction and nonfiction, primarily drawn from current publications and aiming at "all levels of taste within reasonable limits". The order of publication was chosen at random by pulling names out of a cookie jar; the first book to be printed was The Education of Hyman Kaplan by Leo Rosten.

"Surprisingly", according to John Y. Cole, the ASE series was free from official government censorship. But the Army and Navy chief librarians, Trautman and DuBois, made sure that all books were acceptable to both services, and rejected works with "statements or attitudes offensive to our Allies, any religious or racial group, or [...] not in accord 'with the spirit of American democracy'". The publication of Louis Adamic's Native's Return as an ASE title caused controversy because the novel's first edition had contained passages that were considered pro-Communist. Although these had been removed in later editions and the ASE version, Congressman George A. Dondero still protested against what he considered government distribution of "Communist propaganda". More serious problems for the ASE ensued when Title V of the Soldier Voting Act of 1944 limited the distribution of government-financed information to soldiers. The act was sponsored by Senator Robert A. Taft, who feared that the Roosevelt administration would distribute propaganda in favor of the president's reelection to a fourth term. The Army strictly enforced the act and, as a result, banned the ASE publication of Charles A. Beard's history The Republic and Catherine Drinker Bowen's O. W. Holmes biography Yankee from Olympus among other works. After vigorous public backlash, Congress amended the act to make it less restrictive.

Distribution of ASEs began in October of 1943 and continued until 1947. The books were issued to soldiers overseas, such as in hospitals and on transports, and air-dropped as part of the supplies destined for remote outposts. Notably, just before the invasion of Normandy, a mass distribution of ASE titles took place among the troops marshalled in southern England, and each man received a book as he embarked his invasion transport.

The ASE program featured an array of fiction and non-fiction titles, including classics, contemporary bestsellers, biographies, drama, poetry, and genre fiction (mysteries, sports, fantasy, action/adventure, westerns). Most of these books were printed in unabridged versions. Authors included Hervey Allen, Robert Benchley, Stephen Vincent Benét, Max Brand, Joseph Conrad, A. J. Cronin, Carl Crow, Eugene Cunningham, James Oliver Curwood, Clyde Brion Davis, Walter D. Edmonds, Edward Ellsberg, William Faulkner, Peter Field, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. S. Forester, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edmund Gilligan, Arthur Henry Gooden, Zane Grey, Ernest Haycox, MacKinlay Kantor, Frances and Richard Lockridge, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, William Colt MacDonald, John P. Marquand, Ngaio Marsh, W. Somerset Maugham, Clarence E. Mulford, John O'Hara, George Sessions Perry, Edgar Allan Poe, William MacLeod Raine, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Craig Rice, Charles Alden Seltzer, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Luke Short, Thorne Smith, John Steinbeck, George R. Stewart, Bram Stoker, Grace Zaring Stone, James Thurber, W. C. Tuttle, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, and Philip Wylie.

The distinctive covers bore the description, "Armed Services Edition: This is the Complete Book – Not a Digest." Seventy-nine of the titles printed were abridged, usually for length rather than content, and their covers were marked to reflect this fact.