Armed Services Editions (ASE) Paperback Collection

With the 1940 passage of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, Congress established the first peacetime draft in United States history. Initially, those selected served for a period of twelve months. Following Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent declarations of war against Japan and Germany, service was extended to last through the duration of the war (with an additional six-month stint in the Organized Reserves). In all, between 1940-1946, over 10 million Americans would be drafted into the armed services.

The explosive growth in number of civilians entering the service taxed a Federal Government that had not yet established the mechanism of turning tens of thousands of civilians into effective soldiers. Miliary bases had to be built and recruits needed to be clothed, fed, armed, and trained. The government realized that, particularly for those drafted early, morale would be an issue unless they found some way to fill the recruits’ abundant leisure time as facilities and training issues were worked out. The military needed something that was cost-effective, portable and more versatile than sports or other team activities.. More than anything else, books seemed to be the answer.

Richard Trautman, a reserve Army lieutenant, and professionally-trained librarian, was put in charge of the Army’s Library Section. The Army’s initial goal was to purchase one book per enlisted soldier, hoping to use that to build a library at each of the dozens of military bases around the country. However, the reality was that already-large military installations (5000 or more men) received an ample budget for books, while smaller installations (1000 men or fewer) received no book budget at all. Without adequate funding to purchase books, Trautman turned to fellow librarians, many of whom began book collection drives for nearby military bases. The success of these drives came to the attention of the American Library Association (ALA), who began to envision a collection drive on a national level. Librarians across the country were enthusiastic about the idea, and the Red Cross and United Service Organizations (USO) each donated $50,000 to cover administrative cost, and the National Defense Book Campaign (NDBC). Trautman put noted librarian Althea Warren in charge of the program. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s subsequent entry into war with the Axis powers, the NDBC was renamed the Victory Book Campaign (VBC). The VBC was heavily publicized, and the public responded, donating a million books in the first month; by March, 1942 four million books had been donated. In sorting the books, however, the VBC centers noticed a lot of the books were determined to be outdated, of little interest, or otherwise unsuitable for young soldiers (for one reason or another). The sorting centers rejected a million and a half of the four million. Additionally, most of the donations were hardcover books. While this was acceptable for the larger military installations, it was not tenable for those stationed overseas, particularly those who already had to carry heavy packs in the field. While very well-intentioned, the VBC did not offer a viable means to get quality books that were usable to all soldiers. With donations dropping in 1942, the VBC program was discontinued in 1943. Even before the VBC was discontinued, the Army and Navy realized they couldn’t build a viable book program for soldiers through donation; they needed to purchase the titles they wanted for the soldiers. In 1942, representatives from major publishing houses, publishers, and editors looked to aid the war effort. These representatives formed a working group called the Council on Books in Wartime. Initially concerned with promoting specific books to the non-military public to educate them on wartime “imperatives, the Council soon turned to their major project: finding a way to address the problem of selecting the books for soldiers, and then making them available in lightweight, compact, paperback editions.

The editors settled on two sizes for the volumes – 5 ½ X 3 ⅝ and 6 ½ X 4 ½ , with each page containing two columns of type per page. These sizes were determined by the size of pockets on a soldier’s uniform: the larger size could fit in a pants pocket, while the smaller size could fit in a shirt pocket. These sizes – smaller than contemporary trade paperbacks – required special printing procedures. The Council used magazine presses, which could accommodate the thinner paper used for the paperbacks. However, even magazine presses could not be adjusted to print items as small as needed for the ASE paperbacks. The problem was solved by printing pages for two books at the same time on the same sheet of paper, one in the top half of the page and the other on the bottom. After printing, the pages were sliced to create the two books.

The Council’s selection committee chose a wide range of books – established classics, new classics, westerns, mysteries, biographies, humor and art, mathematics, sciences, history, and current affairs. Beginning in September 1843, thirty ASE paperbacks were “published” each month, numbered consecutively with each month’s selections prefaced by a series letter (Series A 1-30, Series B 31-60, Series C 61-90, and so on). In July 1944 the monthly number was increased to 32, with numbering of 1-32 each month). In January 1945, the monthly number was increased to 40, with each month’s selections still numbered 1-40. Beginning in May 1945, though each month’s selections were technically a series, the volumes no longer carried a monthly series preface. From 655-1322 (in June 1947) books carried only the number.

While the ASE project was imagined and executed to benefit the war effort and the many soldiers serving in it, publishers participating in the program had their own interests in mind as well. Many realized that the paperback was going to be a huge part of the postwar publishing industry, and they hoped the Armed Services Editions would help prepare the public for the coming paperback revolution. However, they also wanted to make sure the ASE volumes themselves did not have an impact on the coming market; publishers cooperating in the program demanded there would be no stateside distribution of the paperbacks, nor any resale of surplus books domestically after the war.

In all, the Army and Navy distributed 123 million ASE paperbacks to servicemen around the world. The books were wildly popular among soldiers, many of whom wrote fan letters to authors whose work they found especially meaningful (Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was a special favorite, and Smith received letters of gratitude from many soldiers). The ASEs are credited with getting previous non-readers “hooked” on books. While scholars continue to study the ASE effort, and glean societal intentions in the books selected for the program, it remains one of the highlights of American publishing and is credited with helping create a generation of readers.