BY THE END OF 1942, it had become clear that the Armed Services needed not only a new system of distributing reading material, but also a new type of book: one that was cheap enough for the Services to buy, small enough for a Gl to carry, and interesting enough to appeal to a broad audience.
The Library Section, a division of the Morale Branch in the U.S. War Department, attacked the problem in an ingenious way: instead of working on book design in a vacuum, the Library Section first found production equipment capable of producing cheap and fast printing, and then tailored the design of the books it intended to produce to fit these presses. The chief of the Library Section, Ray L. Trautman, and a graphic arts specialist named H. Stahley Thompson discovered that the rotary presses used to print monthly pulp and digest magazines were available between issues for extended periods of time.
Thompson concluded that such presses could print paperback books for less than 10¢/copy on runs of 50,000 or more and for as little as 5¢/copy on runs of 100,000.
The result was the Armed Services Editions (ASE's), a series of oblong-shaped paperbacks printed in an unusual but handy format.
Most ASE's were printed on presses used primarily for producing digest magazines like World Digest. These fast rotary presses produced magazines two-up--that is, two identical copies at a time, joined at the lower edge of the upper copy and the upper edge of the lower copy, the two copies then being cut apart for individual distribution.
ASE's were printed four-up on these presses: four books-completely different in title and content, but with exactly the same number of leaves-wound up attached to each other at top and bottom. The books were then separated from each other with three horizontal slices, producing four pocket-sized books, each with its spine running parallel to the short side of the cover. Thus ASE's A-5, A-6, A- 7, and A-8 were printed at the same time, one above or below the other: strange bed-(or press- ) fellows!
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Robert Carse. There Go
the Ships. Armed Services Edition [A-5]. UVa. Rose C. Feld. Sophie Halenczik, American. Armed Services Edition [A-6]. UVa. Theodore Pratt. Mr. Winkle Goes to War. Armed Services Edition [A-7]. UVa. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist. Armed Services Edition [A-8]. UVa. |
World Digest. Copies for May-June 1939 and May 1940. UVa. | 
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Longer ASE books were machined in a somewhat larger size on presses used primarily for printing pulp magazines like Commentator.
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Max J. Herzberg, Merrill P. Paine, and Austin M. Works.
Happy
Landings.
Armed Services Edition [A-23]. UVa. Herman Melville. Typee. Armed Services Edition [A-24]. UVa. Rackham Holt. George Washington Carver. Armed Services Edition [A-25]. UVa. Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim. Armed Services Edition [A-26]. UVa. |
Commentator. Copies for December 1941 and January 1942. | 
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The covers of the ASE's always featured an illustration of the original edition's real--or imagined --dustjacket. ASE covers depicting real dustjackets are generally quite easy to tell from those showing imaginary ones: the imaginary dustjackets (see the two examples here) exaggerate the size of the author's name and minimize non-typographic ornamentation. The pictures of real dustjackets show a much greater level of detail, as you can see in the example shown (with its model) on the lower shelf.
| Mark Twain. Selected Stories of Mark Twain. Armed Services Edition [S-9]. UVa. | Walter van Tilburg Clark. The City of Trembling Leaves. Random House, 1945. UVa. | 
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Glenway Wescott. Apartment in Athens. Armed Services Edition [792]. BAP. | Walter van Tilburg Clark. The City of Trembling Leaves. Armed Services Edition [974]. | 
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The ASE edition of Ward's Frank Leahy and the Fighting Irish featured a photograph of the book's original dustjacket, which contained a picture of Frank Leahy himself. ASE's were bound together by staples as well as with glue to thwart vermin and keep the leaves together even when wet. Note the sturdy staples centered on the spine side of the front covers of ASE's.
| Arch Ward. Frank Leahy and the Fighting Irish: The Story of Notre Dame Football. Armed Services Edition [1037]. BAP. | 
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The back cover of each ASE featured a glowing review of its Contents and a brief biography of the author. The back cover of this ASE edition of When Worlds Collide proclaims: "One of the most exciting imaginative stories ever written! . . . We defy you to read a single chapter and go to bed without finishing it!"
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Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie. When Worlds Collide. Armed Services Editon [801]. UVa. |
Virginia Woolf's long novel, The Years, was produced in the larger of ASE's two formats, printed on a pulp magazine press. The dual-column design of the text pages was intended to reduce eye strain.
| Virginia Woolf. The Years. Armed Services Edition [772]. BAP. | 
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