TRAUTMAN AND THOMPSON had come up with an ideal design for the ASE project, but the operation could only proceed with the full support of publishers. In the beginning of 1943, the Council on the Books in Wartime, which agreed to organize and operate the project, faced the formidable task of mobilizing the entire American book industry in favor of the project. In order to do so, the Council drew up a set of guidelines that publishers, authors, booksellers, and librarians could agree upon.
The Council determined that royalties of 1¢ split between publisher and author would be paid for each book produced--not a bad sum for press runs exceeding a hundred thousand copies. Thirty books would be selected by an advisory committee each month and reprinted as ASE editions (the number was later expanded, first to 32 and finally, to 40). The books would be distributed gratis to Armed Services personnel. The selections would not only include a preponderance of current publications and books of widespread popular appeal, but would also include a number of titles that catered to less general audiences.
An unpaid advisory committee drew up a list of potential ASE selections that was then sent to Army and Navy offices for approval. Although the committee consciously strove to select titles that would appeal to a general audience, the wide breadth of genres encompassed is a remarkable one. Titles ranged from Faulkner and Margaret Mead to the latest in science fiction and murder mystery. In the end, 1,322 ASE titles were printed, published, and distributed.
This table (based on information provided in John Jamieson's Books for the Army [NY 1950] pp. 152-153) suggests the enormous diversity of the final selections.
Working with ASE's, one is constantly struck with the diversity of titles offered: science, miscellaneous non-fiction, biography, philosophy, short stories, poetry, humor, as well as novels and various forms of genre fiction, for example:
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Bernard Jaffe. Men of Science in
America:
The Role of Science in the Growth of our Country. Armed Services
Edition [809]. BAP.
Richard Dempewolff. Animal Reveille. Armed Services Edition [H-225]. UVa. M. R. Werner. Barnum: A Biography. Armed Services Edition [M-26]. BAP. Kahlil Gibran. The Prophet. Armed Services Edition [O-2]. BAP. Vereen Bell. Brag Dog and Other Stories. Armed Services Edition [743]. BAP. Louis Untermeyer, ed. The Fireside Book of Verse. Armed Services Edition [T-8]. BAP. James Thurber. My World-and Welcome to It. Armed Services Edition [S-5]. BAP Colln. Monte Barrett. Sun in Their Eyes: A Novel of Texas. Armed Services Edition [807]. BAP. Ione Sandberg Shriber. Pattern for Murder. Armed Services Edition [798]. BAP. William Sloane. The Edge of Running Water. Armed Services Edition [T-23]. BAP. Charles Alden Seltzer. The Trail Horde. Armed Services Edition [917]. BAP. |
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The very first ASE to be printed, in September 1943, was Leo Rosten's The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, a collection of humorous connected stories. In a 1944 study of the popularity of the first 120 Armed Services Editions titles, 29 books were judged to be 'outstandingly popular'; Hyman Kaplan was one of them. In a 1982 recollection of his role as an ASE author, Rosten writes of having to compete with a one-paddle pingpong table.
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Leo Rosten. The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. Armed Services Edition [A-1]. 1943. UVa. | Leo Rosten. Letter to John Y. Cole. 23 November 1982. Transcript. |
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A number of ASE's dwelt on issues of the war itself, from a step-by step account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Battle Report, to the fictional tale of American soldiers in American Guerrilla in the Philippines.
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At first, the selection committee included very few whodunits, but (after frequent complaints) books like The Big Sleep, The Fallen Sparrow, and Calamity Town were added to the lists, and a good portion of the 1,322 titles ultimately distributed were mystery novels.
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In a 1945 Saturday Evening Post article, David G. Wittels reported on one soldier who had been shot in the ankle and who had to wait in a foxhole for help: "Corp. Erwin Rorick spent the hours before help came reading Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. He grabbed it the day before under the delusion that it was a murder mystery, but he discovered, to his amazement, that he liked it anyway."
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Willa Cather. Death Comes for the Archbishop. Armed Services Edition [D-97]. UVa. |
Some of the most popular titles in the ASE's were westerns; more than 150 westerns were eventually to appear in the series.
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Max Brand. Danger Trail. Armed Services Edition [877]. BAP. | Zane Grey. The Heritage of the Desert. Armed Services Edition [997]. UVa. |
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Ernest Haycox. Deep West. Armed Services Edition [I-254]. UVa. | Clarence E. Mulford. Tex. Armed Services Edition [918]. UVa. |
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Adventure stories and other escape fiction genres were what many soldiers wanted to read, and there were a great many ASE's to fit the bill.
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Geoffrey Household. The Rogue Male. Armed Services Edition [I-248]. UVa. | Jack London. The Call of the Wild. Armed Services Edition [K-3]. UVa. |
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Sea stories were big hits in the Navy--even Moby Dick, and THE COMPLETE BOOK--NOT A DIGEST--at that! The Navy contracted with the Council on Books in Wartime to take a quarter of the ASE's produced; the other three-quarters went to the Army.
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