The Librarian of Burned Books: A Novel

The Armed Services Editions featured in the novel (commonly shortened to ASEs) was an initiative created by the Council on Books in Wartime which existed from 1943 to 1947. It was a morale-boosting program designed to keep men fighting while they were overseas. More than 123 million books were distributed to soldiers during this time. The Armed Services Editions were designed to be as compact and lightweight as possible, a detour from the standard, weighty hardcovers of the day. The widespread distribution and reverence attached to these titles ushered in a new age of paperback publishing that continues to this day.

In addition to changing the physical form of books, the Armed Services Editions incited a new love of reading in a generation of men that had previously shown little interest in it. The author of The Librarian of Burned Books, Brianna Labuskes, states: “Men who confessed to never having finished a book cover to cover were tearing through the ASEs—sometimes literally, so others could read the chapters behind them” (Labuskes, Briana. “The Real History Behind ‘The Librarian of Burned Books.’” BookBub, 2023). These books created a storytelling movement and rescued several floundering titles from literary obscurity, including The Great Gatsby. Classics and adventure stories were especially popular. The majority of titles were printed in their entirety; however, certain longer texts needed to be condensed slightly to fit the required size: a maximum 512 pocketbook pages for the larger editions (designed to fit in a man’s hip pocket) and a maximum 384 pages for the smaller editions (designed to fit into a breast pocket). These books were designed to be carried on the go without slowing the soldiers down (“Armed Services Editions.” Grolier Club Online Exhibitions).

It was the Council on Books in Wartime, a collective made up of booksellers, librarians, and publishers, who coined the phrase “Books are weapons in the war of ideas.” They spread the belief that storytelling was an essential human act and an important way to stay strong in the face of adversity.