During World War II, 123 million copies of almost 1200 different book titles were distributed to American soldiers through the ambitious publishing project known as the Armed Services Editions. The slogan for the series was "Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas." Fredrik Tydal, post-doctoral fellow at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, will give a talk about his archival research on the series. While the series does contain popular literature, Westerns, and detective novels, it also features classics and contemporary modernism: from Homer to Voltaire, and from Thomas Mann to Virginia Woolf. The series also includes several novels, such as The Grapes of Wrath, that deal with pressing social issues on the home front. Dr. Tydal’s talk is co-sponsored by History of the Book, Literacy Studies, and Project Narrative.
Read more here: https://literacystudies.osu.edu/events/fredrik-tydal-armed-services-editions
