Or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. And now from the 2015 roosevelt reading festival, Molly Guptill manning discusses her book, when books went to war the stories that helped us win world war ii. And now it is my pleasure to introduce our author for this session, Molly Manning. She will be discussing her new book, when books went to war the stories that helped us win world war ii. Molly manning grew up in new york north of albany, so welcome back to the Hudson River Valley to you. She graduatedfy bay a that capita from if fy beta cap kappa. A graduate of the Cardozo School of law in new york city, shes an attorney for the United States court of appeals for the Second Circuit in new york city. In 2012 she published her first book. It tells the true story of one of the most elaborate literary hoaxes in american history. Her latest book, when books went to war, tells the amazing and inspiring story of how the United States government and americas librarians and publishers educated americans on the home front about the importance of books in wartime and organized programs that led to the distribution of over 140 million books to u. S. Soldierstr and sailors serving in our armed forces during world war ii. Please join me in welcoming Molly Manning to the roosevelt reading festival. [applause] me in welcoming Molly Manning to the roosevelt reading festival. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and thank you for coming. What i would like to talk about today is this extraordinary story of how books played an essential role in world war ii. It has been forgotten but i think you will see they were an important part of world war ii and defined that generation and the generations that came after. 140 million books were distributed to those in world war ii. That is an extro extraordina number and the undertaking was extraordinary as well. What i would like to start with is why books all of things that could be provided to servicemen why did the government select reading materials. Really we have congress to thank for this. Due to the disastrous timing of the selective training and service act and the allocation of funding for Training Camps to train the people drafted in the military service the army faced an an an a a an expense. Most americans didnt want to join what they considered a foreign war and thought it didnt concern them. America was still reeling from the Great Depression and they felt like domestic problems really should have been the main focus of the government not the war in europe. But fdr realized if america were attacked, the current state of the military could not possibly defend the United States. The American Army was only approximately 174,000 people in 1939 that was really small. And so he asked congress to please pass legislation to allow for a draft and Congress Worked on it over the summer and in 1940 they finally passed the selective training and service act. They also realized they needed to have funding so that the army could build adequate Training Camps for the new people coming into the military. So what ended up happening is people were drafted into the services before new Training Camps were built for them. Instead of going to a Training Area with barracks and cafeterias and classrooms and ba bathroom and things of that nature for training, they ended up having villages of tents. I am assuming most of you are from new york and are familiar with what winter feels like. Unfortunately the draft occurred over the winter so living in tents during the winter time in the north was really a miserable experience. So that alone made many people feel less than excited for their military service. On top of that, many didnt understand why they were drafted. America was not at war. It didnt make sense why they would have to train for military service under those circumstances and a lot of people were young who were drafted into the military and were used to living at home with their parents. This is the first time they were taken out of their home to live with strangers. The military had not yet received uniforms and didnt have guns. The men were stuck wearing uniforms from world war one that were very itchy because they were made out of wool and use broom sticks pretending they were guns. Under these circumstances, it was a perfect recipe for miserary. The army had a motto that happy soldiers would be better soldiers. They faced miserable soldiers and didnt want to know what at a kind of soldiers they would turn out to be. After a full day of training they could relax and enjoy themselves. The men had facilities in fort b benning they had pool halls and they could watch theater coming through and give a show. And they had libraries so the men could take out books and they had tables so if they wanted to write a loved one to a letter at home they had a private place rather than being crowded into a tent with strangers trying to pour out their heart to loved ones. The army realized the men who had the amenities were dramatically happy and the army felt they should duplicate that. But the only problem was they could not stop construction on the structures to build a movie theater. They tried to think what kind of entertainment can we provide that would be small, not necessarily have to be housed in a structure and they realized books would be perfect. They were not expensive, they could distribute the books in their tent and each night they would have something to go back to entertain them. Once they made the realization, they faced a problem. Congress had not thought to provide a giant book budget to help boost morale. When civilian librarians heard about this they thought if people wanted to read books they should have them. So they hosted the largest book drive in history to donate to americas camps for the army and navy. The effort was called the victory book campaign. They planned the campaign toward the end of 1941 and right before the camp pain kicked off pearl harbor was attacked. Suddenly everybody in america, as isolated as it happened, they decided this was a war they all wanted to fight in and everyone wanted to do their part and if people wanted books for Training Camps americans wanted to donate books for Training Camps. Librarians started plastering posters all across the United States so everyone about the book campaign. And on the steps of new york library there was a twoweek fanfare event where they tried to bring in celebrities, and politicians to explain to the American Public why books were so important during war time. Each day, thousands upon thousands of books, were donated. His is the basement of the Public Library and you see two people with stacks taller than them of books donated. Catherine heprin came out bringing sacks of books for donation and signed each one and wrote an encouraging message on each of the front covers of the books. This campaign wasnt just by adults and for adults. Children got involved. Librarians worked with boy and girl scouts who organized door to door campaigns and organized events with a collection point asking people to bring books and sorting them. From dawn to dusk they collected 10,000 books. The campaign was going well. After a few months, they collected willians millions of books. They ended up turning to president roosevelt for a little bit of help. He was happy to help. He declared april 17th 1942 was victory book day asking allamericans to go to through their books shelves and select books they enjoyed reading and donate them. President roosevelt and his wife were fans of book reading. If you visited their home nearby you know they had shelves full of book. He felt books played an Important Role in the war. As the german army spread across europe, there was a concerted effort by the german army to destroy books. The idea was getting control over ideas. Any ideas that didnt support the nazi platform and what ideas existed were considered dangerous. Those books are being removed from libraries and burned. Some libraries contained so many dangerous books they had to be locked and no one was allowed to go. Fdr didnt think that was the best policy and he thought americans could combat that by trying to read as many books as they could. The work of the victory book campaign, in collecting all types of books regardless of view point, and sending them to the Training Camps for americans that would face combat and the german army he thought was a genius idea. He gave a speech about the power of books and talked about the book burning. You can see this poster made with an extra from the speech and he concluded that we know books are weapons. After the speech, harry re he h conference and one report asked mr. President , what types of books should we ask americans to donate and fdr jokingly responded anything but algebra. On a serious note he said really, you should donate any book you read and enjoyed. With the president s support, in the next month or so the campaign met the goal of collecting 10 million books in 1942 which was a huge accomplishment. What did you notice about the books being collected . They are all hard backs and this was find for people in stationary Training Camps where they would just be reading at their leisure at the end of training. They were not so ideal for people who were sent out to the front. So this is north africa actually. You can see the people appear have been marching for quite a time and have packs on their backs and all of their personal possession are in there. The items they carried were precious and necessities. Food, water, ammunition, their weapons. It was very important things that would make the cut that went into the bag. As the men marched a miles, a few more miles, they stopped sometimes to go back through their pack and see if there was anything they could eliminate that wasnt necessary because their feet were blistered, it was hot, they were uncomfortable and wanted to do anything they can to lighten the load. Many of the men carried books off the ships because they knew nights would be long and boring, there was no entertainment there is not movie theaters in the north african desert. So if they were going to have entertainment they would have to carry it with them. But unfortunately many books had to be set aside because they could not care the weight. Paperbacks would be a huge improvement but the problem was the american paperback industry was in its infanacy. In 1942, 10 billion books collected would be a small portion for paperbacks. Librarians couldnt do anything about paperbacks or hardcovers were being printed. That was on the publishers and they didnt want to print paperbacks. A hardcover book cost anywhere between 2. 36 2. 56 and a paperback could sell for 20 cents. So they got much more money. The same was said for people running bookstores. They could make more profit off hardcovers. But they realized it was a special circumstance and they will have to print a special book for troops, just for distribution overseas and decided they would have a special program with the army and navy selling the books directly to them and the army and navy could distribute them around the world. But they had to redesign the book. It had to look like a book that never existed before. First of all, they got rid of the hardcover and sided with paperbacks. They reduced the size. The smallest were three and a half inches by five and a half inches and larger paperbacks were four and a half by six and half. Book pressess couldnt print books this tiny. Publishers had to figure out how to print them and turned to magazine presses printing two books on top of each other and sliced them in half. Magazines are printed on thinner paper. So publishers decided that is great because we can make thinner books. And they went up it the magazines using paper about the thickness of news print. Both of these books are copies of a tree grows in brooklyn. The book on the left is the hardcover and the book on the right is the thickness of the Armed Services edition. To show you how small they are and pocketsize i have one in my pocket right now. This is mark twains mysterious stranger. It fits in the pocket. It is light weight. These books didnt have to fit into a backback because they fit in the breast pocket or the back pocket of a standard uniform. They published 30 different titles each month and then went to 40 books a month. I want to show you a little about the inside of the books because it is remarkable the changes they made. The back cover of each book had a short summary so if a man wanted to figure out if this was the book he wanted to read he could figure it out quickly, if it wasnt for him he could pass it along. They are printed with two columns of text and this was extraordinary because publishers realized soldiers wouldnt be able to read in ideal lighting conditions. They didnt have a lamp they could turning while stuck in the fox hole and men in the navy were swimming from hammocks below decks without adequate lithe lighting to read a book. The research showed if they made the columns of text shorter it was easier to read. The double columns made it easier for soldiers to read. In the back side cover of the edition, printed all of the books that were printed that month. And so if a person had a favorite title, a favorite author, and they wanted to make sure they didnt miss it, all they had to do was check the back of each book and if their favorite author was there they know someone in the unit had that book and they just had to track them down. There was a strict unspoken policy to swap books. As soon as you were done with a book you had to pass it on to the next person who wanted to read it. Poplar books had waiting list. So you could sign up to be the next person in line to read a specific title if you heard it was a good one. Now the books are incredibly popl poplar. I like to have the men themselves tell you how they felt about the book rather than me paraphrasing because i think their own words are powerful. I want to show you a few books printed as Armed Services edition and tell you what the men said about them back into the 1940s. So the first book i want to start out with is educational high simon caplin. This was the first Armed Services edition to be printed and you can know that because there is an a1 printed in the corner. The aseries was the first 30 books and book number one. This is a book that basically has a bunch of short sketches of humor. They are stories that arent difficult reading, meant to entertain and make the men laugh. One person wrote to the author to talk about what this book meant to him and his unit. And what the he said was i want to thank you profoundly for myself and more important for the men in this god for saken part of the globe. We fry by day and freeze by night. What we are doing near the persian golf no one knows. All we have to recreation is a pingpong set with one paddle only. We received your back last week and i read it and simply roared with laughter. As an ex experiment, i read it at camp fire and the men howled. I have not heard such laughs in months. Now they demand i read only one story per night. It is our ration on pleasure. For the men that first received the aseries of books it was a total surprise. No one told them they would start receiving monthly shipments of books. The first arrived in december of 1943 so most people assumed it was a christmas present. They received the bundles of books, ripped them open, and distributed them among themselves as fast as possible. In january of 1944 they were surprised to find they received another shipment of books. Word started to spread this was going to be a monthly phenomenon and the men start d looking forward to it. Stars and stripes, a poplar army newspaper, started printing book list to let the men know this is what is coming next. One of the next book after the series of the education of caplin was chicken every sunday by rosemary taylor. This book was pretty much a whole some book. It was the story of a young girl who grew up in her mothers boarding house and reports on what is happening. The mother is booking guest that are crazy and asking for strange things to happen and the mother is always trying to appease the request. She happens to be a fabulous cook as well and there are descriptions of the mothers cooking and that is what did it for most men. When they are eating tin cans of rations reading about the dinners drove them crazy. One man wrote even the talk of ice water was enough to set him aquery. What was great was the very vivid images of mothers cooking reminded them of their mothers and what they cooked. This book brought many back to what it was like to be a civilian. One man wrote reading this book took him home a couple hours and alleviated my homesickness. A final book i want to highlight is betty smiths a tree grows in brooklyn. This is told from per specspectf a young girl growing up with an imp impoverished family and her father dies in high school and she is forced to get a job and support the family. It was her dream to go to college and she did everything she could to eventually get to college. She ended up succeeding in that and i think a lot of men saw this example and as they faced the war and they faced possible death and felt they were facing trumendous odds against them they saw the example of the young girl in the book and they were inspired. Betty smith received over 10,000 letters just from members of the services. She was good enough to write back to most of those men. The book was compared to reading a good letter from home or taking a leave home because the men felt they were transport d back to their childhood. What is amazing about this book is many wrote to betty smith and talked about how the book helped them survive the war mentally and emotionally. There is one group of letters that stand out and they are from one man and the first letter he wrote it seemed like the unit kept facing missions that were Suicide Missions and none of them should survive and he would be in the middle of the battle and just feel like this is it. This is going to be the end of me. And then there is something about this book that popped into his head and he would start thinking about this young girl and the odds she faced and somehow he would find courage and he would fight and survive. And so the first letter that he wrote to betty smith was admiration and he said you helped inspire be in the most trying tay days of battle with battle fatigue and depression. He went into the battle again and thought about the book and wrote again saying once again you have saved me. A few months later his final letter arrived. He told betty smith he had gone to battle again and this time was wounded and the wound was so bad he was going to be discharged but wanted to tell her one more time what that book meant to him. He said he and his wife were plan to start a family when they got home and they were going to name their child betty smith if it was a girl in honor of the woman that caused him to live. Between 19431948 over a 123 million of the Armed Service editions were distributed. When the war ended and the Program Ended its effects didnt end. There are two main things you can feel today from the distribution of the books. First of all the american paperback industry exploded. Publishers saw there was a whole segment of the population that would never buy hardcover books but would by paperbacks. A 25 cent paperbacks reached a different part of the population that wanted to read. In 1939, 200 paperbacks were printed. By 1947, 95 million printed. In 1952, 250 million were printed and in 1959 for the First Time Ever in america more pap paperbacks were printed than hardcover so i think theyiga theyigatheyigat theyigate they got the message they could make money off the paperbacks. And the second impact was the gi bill. The average soldier didnt read books before joining the war. One man at west point insisted the only reason he went to a library was because harry re reid he had a direct order to do so. With the gi bill, suddenly everyone who was discharged with honers had the chance to go to college. These men realized they enjoyed doing something as scholarly as reading and when this opportunity opened up for them to go back to school and earn a skeej education they decided to take advantage of that. Over two Million People got an education, many being the first in their family to get a college education, and succeeded generations continued the going to college. I think the books changed the way we are as. Are educated. For many people they learned if they could read shakespeare and di dickins in a fox hole they could ring nonfiction swinging from hammock in the bottom of a ship they could succeed at college and succeed at life. That is my presentation and i will be happy to take questions if anyone would like to ask one. [applause] have you done any research on ebay . I want to make sure i heard right. Are the books Still Available today. The answer is yes. The idea was they were supposed to stay overseas but most people brought a book or two home what happens most people brought a book or two home with them because it was going to take at least two weeks and they were not going to be giving any kind of military maneuvers or anything once the war was over. So they brought books home with them and kept them as mementos. Some people loved the book so much they were desperate to have mementos after the war that they actually took a group of books and mail them home so that the books would be waiting for them when they got home. So you can find them online, sometimes on ebay and other websites. I per sali have looked for them at flea markets and have had some luck. My experience some of the titles less popular can be as cheap as a dollar and ones like brooklyn and the great gatsby tend to go for higher prices. Any other questions . Were there any titles that had been proposed but then were decided were not appropriate . There was a bit of a censorship debacle with congress actually. The senator of ohio who was a republican was worried after your might win the fourth term and also worried that the democratic government would send political propaganda to the 16 Million People in the services and that was enough to swing the election so legislation ended up being passed but any material that had a political viewpoint was prohibited and couldnt be sent to the troops so of course all of the Armed Services editions are reading material purchased by the government so all of these books that are wonderful histories and short stories couldnt be printed as Armed Service additions because if you violated the law you could be fined a thousand dollars or imprisoned for a year or both and so the publishers didnt want to get arrested for printing these books but they also didnt think that if they should have to censor themselves so they decided to wage the war on censorship so they used the departments they knew how to get press releases out there and they had major american newspapers and radio stations and talked about how it was seen congress was passing legislation to censor reading. It was amended so that they no longer were going to be proved to be prevented from the political viewpoint and they ended up actually being able to publish any books that they wanted. That said, some books did upset certain groups of people. Two books in particular that came under fire were strange fruit by Lillian Smith and forever amber by kathleen windsor. These books were controversial because they had some scenes and publishers thought if they want to read books like this lets give them books with sex scenes but there were certain religious groups but didnt want them going to the servicemen. One of the books was considered so in the sense that they banned the book. One of the publishers ended up thinking this was even greater that the army was willing to distribute them to their soldiers. He actually was quoted in the paper saying it looks like all you have to do to get published as an Armed Service addition is to get and in boston. There were attempts to censor and make it so that certain books couldnt be printed but they were not successful. We are just about out of time. Thank you again for joining us. [applause]