When Books Went to War, Molly Guptill Manning
When Books Went to War, Molly Guptill Manning
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When Books Went to War
The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II

Author: Molly Guptill Manning

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne

Unabridged: 6 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/02/2014

Synopsis

When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more.Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered twenty million hardcover donations. In 1943 the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks for troops to carry in their pockets and their rucksacks in every theater of war.Comprising 1,200 different titles of every imaginable type, these paperbacks were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights.They wrote to the authors, many of whom responded to every letter. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity. They made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. When Books Went to War is an inspiring story for history buffs and book lovers alike.

About Molly Guptill Manning

Molly Guptill Manning is the author of the New York Times bestseller When Books Went to War as well as The Myth of Ephraim Tutt. She has published articles in the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. She was a supervisory staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City and is currently an associate professor at New York Law School.

About Bernadette Dunne

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Biblio

In a slice of history that's hard to imagine could be repeated today, When Books Went to War tells the story of a program that delivered millions of books to Americans in the military overseas during World War II. For some reason, this story has been all over place recently, in an article in Atlanti......more

Goodreads review by Laura

I vividly remember the American Service Edition of W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions that was among my parents' books, with its distinctive shape--the width about double in size from the height, its double columns of type, and its floppy cover. I suspect that my father brought this book back from his A......more

Quotes

“A careful account of what it took—a lot—to ensure that US fighting men had the right stuff to read.” USA Today

“Illuminates a dusty slice of WWII history that most of us know nothing about.” Entertainment Weekly (Grade A)

“Dunne…depicts a wide range of voices…[and] a spot-on German accent eerily laced with Nazi evil. This audio is perfect for different generations of readers.” Booklist (audio review)

“Manning has scoured archives to retrieve soldiers’ touching accounts of the therapeutic, life-saving influence of stories that took their minds away from daily horrors.” Booklist (starred review)

“While re-telling the history of the war, Manning threads through the impact that books had in fighting the Nazis.” Amazon.com

“Highly readable and extremely appealing.” Library Journal

“A fresh perspective on the trials of war and the power of books.” Kirkus Reviews

“[A] delightful history of a little-known aspect of the war in 1940…Manning’s entertaining account will have readers nostalgic for that seemingly distant era when books were high priority.” Publishers Weekly

“[An] uplifting account of America’s counterattack against Nazi Germany’s wholesale burning of books…I was enthralled and moved.” Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried

“A thrilling and concise history of World War II featuring the written word.” Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

Awards

  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
  • Goodreads Readers’ Choice
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