Reading Between Enemy Lines: Armed Services Editions and World War II

This article examines the real and symbolic importance of reading books—especially Armed Services Edition paperback books—during World War II. Lingering memories of World War I propagandizing at home, coupled with knowledge of Nazism's hostility to books abroad, compelled the American publishing community to fight for the free production and dissemination of all reading matter during World War II. In addition to exploring what books soldiers read and why, this article shows how the emergence of the Armed Services Edition paperback became a critical source of liberal democratic rejuvenation during the war as well as a harbinger of the pluralist conception of liberalism after it.