“Book Are Our Weapons”: How the Council on Books in Wartime Helped the U.S. World War II Effort

The country’s first response to the dearth of reading materials for soldiers was the Victory Book Campaign, a nation-wide book drive organized by librarians that sent over 20 million books to soldiers overseas between 1941 and 1943. The problem was that most books at this time were still hardcover, and when soldiers had to shed extra weight to march their belongings from camp to camp, clunky hardcover books were often the first to go. 

The Council on Books in Wartime (CBW) replaced the VBC in 1943 when a group of America’s most prominent publishers coalesced to print special paperback Armed Services Editions (ASEs) of literature far more inspiring than the typical VBC donation, which many civilians viewed as a way to get rid of books they didn’t want. In its four-year run, the CBW brought more than 1,300 titles to American troops overseas, even rescuing modern classics like The Great Gatsby and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from obscurity. 

“The book written to express and inspire big thoughts, big dreams, mature and steady purposes in America, a book written to the scale of America, will fire a million guns and launch a thousand ships,” said New York Times columnist Anne O'Hare McCormick at a symposium for the program. 

Read the passage below to get a sneak peek at When Books Went to War, then download the book today for a compelling, informative, and inspiring account of a wartime campaign in which the pen was mightier than the sword. 

In May 1943 the New York Sun broke the news that the Army and Navy no longer needed the VBC’s donated books. For the first time, the armed forces planned to purchase millions of paperbacks each month, with the help of an organization that called itself the Council on Books in Wartime. “Too many people looked upon the voluntary campaign as an opportunity to get rid of books that nobody would want,” the Sun said. The next day, the New York Herald Tribune picked up the story: “Public Campaign Fails, Army Will Buy Books,” the headline read. “American soldiers are going to have books if the Army itself has to buy them,” the article said.

Believing that a 1944 campaign was likely, VBC volunteers were disappointed to learn that their work had been dubbed a failure. Days after publication of the Sun and Tribune articles, the USO informed the VBC that it would not provide any funding for a 1944 campaign. The VBC had no choice but to close its doors. With heavy hearts, and after lengthy discussion, the ALA officers voted to discontinue the campaign as of October 1, 1943. Volunteers across the United States received a letter from the VBC headquarters stating that the War Department planned to purchase books, and that the VBC would stop its book drive, as it was no longer needed. Outraged librarians made their opinions known. One librarian wrote to the VBC demanding an explanation for why the campaign was ending when the need for books was insatiable and “our warehouse is almost empty.” “If libraries are going to abdicate their peculiar war responsibilities and opportunities, they can expect to be treated with increased indifference,” said an incensed librarian from Cleveland. “Certainly the need for which the Campaign was brought into being has not been fully met—in fact, [it] has scarcely diminished,” wrote an exasperated librarian from the American Merchant Marine Library Association.

Yet the decision was hard to argue. There was a limit to the quantity and usefulness of donated books, and it was time for a larger-scale effort: printing new books chosen and constructed expressly for Americans at war. The design was as important as the choice of titles. Cartoonist Bill Mauldin, who documented Army life in France, Italy, and Burma, once tried to explain for the home front the daily rigors an infantryman faced. He suggested:

Dig a hole in your back yard while it is raining. Sit in the hole until the water climbs up around your ankles. Pour cold mud down your shirt collar. Sit there for forty-eight hours, and, so there is no danger of your dozing off, imagine that a guy is sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you on the head or set your house on fire.

Get out of the hole, fill a suitcase full of rocks, pick it up, put a shotgun in your other hand, and walk on the muddiest road you can find. Fall flat on your face every few minutes as you imagine big meteors streaking down to sock you.

After ten or twelve miles (remember—you are still carrying the shotgun and suitcase) start sneaking through the wet brush. Imagine that somebody has booby-trapped your route with rattlesnakes which will bite you if you step on them. Give some friend a rifle and have him blast in your direction once in a while.

Snoop around until you find a bull. Try to figure out a way to sneak around him without letting him see you. When he does see you, run like hell all the way back to your hole in the back yard, drop the suitcase and shotgun, and get in.

If you repeat this performance every three days for several months you may begin to understand why an infantryman sometimes gets out of breath. But you still won’t understand how he feels when things get tough.

The physical demands made on an infantryman, or anyone fighting near the frontlines, required that all unnecessary items be removed from one’s pack. “You look everything over and try to find something else you can throw away to make the load on  [your] blister[ed] [feet] a little lighter,” Mauldin said. Even gas masks were routinely chucked because the men were so desperate to lighten the weight they carried. It is not surprising that a hardcover book was unlikely to survive the final cut. As Sergeant Ralph Thompson sarcastically said, if “you could see what an infantryman’s normal impedimenta consist of, you’d understand why he doesn’t run out and buy a couple of 1,000 page historical novels to top off the load.”

Yet they craved their reading. Army newspapers and magazines, such as Stars and Stripes and Yank, the Army Weekly, were in high demand. When each set of popular domestic magazines arrived, they were snatched up, pored over, and passed on to the next guy in line. Mauldin said that “soldiers at the front read K-ration labels when the contents are listed on the package, just to be reading something.” Books were wanted—but not hardcovers. What the Army and Navy needed were conveniently sized, featherweight volumes.

While paperback books might seem like an obvious solution, the softcover book had not yet been embraced by all publishing companies. The war (and most notably, rationing) had sparked a new trend away from hardcover tomes and toward smaller softcover books, mostly provided by new paperback publishers and imprints. The shift was stark. In 1939, fewer than two hundred thousand paperback books were sold in the United States; by 1943, this number had climbed to over forty million. Before the 1940s, the publishing industry and bookstores had snubbed the paperback. Booksellers refused to place the inelegant and inferior softcovers in their shops, which were almost all devoted to stately, sturdy hardcovers. The profit margin on a hardcover book, priced at about ten times the cost of a softcover, was a significant obstacle to publishers in thinking beyond the format. However, the tides began to turn when publishers' access to paper was slashed by rationing, and restrictions were placed on their consumption of cotton cloth used for hardcover book bindings (the government needed this cloth to make camouflage netting). As each publishing company faced the conundrum of producing books with only a fraction of the paper and cotton cloth they typically used, they came to grips with the idea that they would not be able to manufacture their usual quantity and quality of hardcover books using their ordinary methods. 

Pocket Books, the first American publishing company to mass-market paperbacks, demonstrated that it could secure robust profits by selling paperbacks in drugstores and five-and-dime chains (such as Woolworth's) instead of traditional bookstores. As its name suggests, Pocket Books prioritized smaller volumes that used less paper. Even the most stubborn proponents of hardcover books had to admit that paperbacks were well suited to overcome wartime restrictions. What emerged was a revolution in the American book industry. Time magazine declared that, between the budding paperback trade and off-the-charts book sales, 1943 “was the most remarkable in the 150-year-old history of U.S. publishing.”

The concept for the Council on Books in Wartime was realized one fateful day in February 1942, when Clarence Boutell, the publicity director for G. P. Putnam’s Sons, had lunch with George Oakes, of the New York Times. Oakes mentioned that the Times had recently refurbished and renovated Times Hall, a theater on Manhattan’s Forty-Fourth Street, and that it was being made available to host programs by public-minded organizations. Boutell, who believed that books were an essential weapon for building morale and fighting the war of ideas, suggested that publishers assemble at Times Hall to discuss how books could be used to win the war. “The men of words shared the responsibility with the makers of guns and the users of them” to ensure victory and a lasting peace, Boutell averred. The two men agreed to ask their colleagues if they had any interest in such a program.

Back at his office, Boutell presented the idea to Putnam’s president, Melville Minton, who was interested enough to suggest they meet with Malcolm Johnson, of Doubleday, Doran & Co., to discuss it further. Publishing was a second career for Johnson, who had graduated from MIT with a chemical engineering degree and then spent seven years with the Standard Oil Company on a project in China. However, once he discovered publishing, Johnson knew he had found his true calling. He began as a managing editor of the Atlantic Monthly before landing a job at Doubleday. Johnson worked in publishing for the rest of his life. He became a prominent figure in the industry, and his opinion of Boutell’s idea carried weight. Luckily, he loved it.

Representatives from several large publishing houses and key figures in the industry formed a working committee. Boutell was voted chairman of the group. With Johnson, other members included Donald S. Klopfer of Random House; Frederic G. Melcher, editor of Publishers Weekly, William Warder Norton, president of W.W. Norton; Robert M. Coles of the American Booksellers Association; George Oakes and Ivan Veit of the New York Times; and Stanley P. Hunnewell of the Book Publishers Bureau, the industry's leading trade organization. At a March 1942 meeting, this group voted to form the Council on Books in Wartime, with the objective of exploring how books could serve the nation during the war. One week later, another meeting was held at which Norton suggested that the council's slogan be: “Books are the weapons in the war of ideas.” It was adopted on the spot. Membership quickly swelled to over seventy representatives of the publishing world. 

During the early months of its existence, the council seemed to be “a committee in search of a project.” All believed books had a definite role in the war, but how could they be mobilized into action? In the spring of 1942, the council hosted a meeting of publishing professionals at Times Hall to discuss this question. To spur discussion, each invited guest received an essay in advance written by council members, entitled “Books and the War.” The essay began by noting that total war was underway, with fighting not only “in the field and on the sea and in the air,” but also in “the realm of ideas.” It said: “The mightiest single weapon this war has yet employed” was “not a plane, or a bomb or a juggernaut of tanks”—it was Mein Kampf. This single book caused an educated nation to “burn the great books that keep liberty fresh in the hearts of men.” If America’s goal was victory and world peace, “all of us will have to know more and think better than our enemies think and know,” the council asserted. “This war is a war of books . . . Books are our weapons.” This missive did exactly what the council had hoped it would. Conversation flowed as writers and publishers contemplated their special role in the war. Interest in attending the Times Hall meeting burgeoned. So many requests for tickets to the event were received that many people had to be turned away.

On May 12, 1942, Times Hall was filled to capacity with writers, journalists, editors, publishers, major government figures, and all others who had a stake in the freedom to print and publish the written word. For two nights, the book world converged to examine the themes in the council’s essay. The keynote speaker, Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle Jr., commenced the program by asking that “everyone who has anything to do with books . . . take good care that the books are worthy of the place which is vouchsafed them.” Hitler had waged war on ideas, Berle said, and “if authors still may write, if publishers still may print, if universities still may teach, it is because, and only because, many and many men for faith alone are prepared to give their lives, their children's lives, and all they have, for the defense of that right." New York Times columnist Anne O'Hare McCormick took the podium next. She spoke of how there were three pressing wartimes needs that only books could placate: Americans needed books that could clarify the issues wrapped up in the war, prove that the problems that seemed insoluble could be solved, and fortify resolve and helped them endure the hardships they faced. “The book written to express and inspire big thoughts, big dreams, mature and steady purposes in America, a book written to the scale of America, will fire a million guns and launch a thousand ships,” Ms. McCormick's voice boomed as a clatter of applause engulfed it.

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