ASE'S Recruited
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 cent 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.
Council On Books In Wartime
|
CLASSIFICATION |
NO. OF TITLES |
EXAMPLES |
|
Adventure |
33 |
Jack London, The Call of the Wild; Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male |
|
Aviation |
8 |
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Night Flight; Beryl Markham, West with the Night |
|
Biographies |
86 |
Marquis James, Andrew Jackson; Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin |
|
Classics |
23 |
Homer, The Odyssey; Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
|
Cartoons |
6 |
Peter Arno [introduction by], The Bedside Tales; George Price, Is It Anyone We Know? |
|
Contemporary fiction |
246 |
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath; John P. Marquand, The Late George Apley |
|
Countries and travel |
45 |
Gontran de Poncins, Kabloona; Agnes Newton Keith, Land Below the Wind |
|
Current affairs and the war |
20 |
Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy; Ernie Pyle, Brave Men |
|
Drama |
7 |
Eugene O'Neill, Selected Plays; George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man and Two Other Plays |
|
Fantasy |
26 |
W.H. Hudson, Green Mansions; Roark Bradford, Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun |
|
Historical novels |
113 |
Hervey Allen, Bedford Village; Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage |
|
History |
20 |
Carl Sandburg, Storm over the Land; Allan Nevins and B.J. Brebner, The Making of Modern Britain |
|
Humor |
130 |
James Thurber, The Middle- Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze; Thorne Smith, The Glorious Pool |
|
Miscellaneous |
20 |
Michael MacDougall, Danger in the Cards; M. Lincoln Schuster, ed., A Treasury of the World's Great Letters |
|
Music and the arts |
11 |
Paul Eduard Miller, ed., Esquire's Jazz Book, 1944 |
|
Mysteries |
122 |
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep; Ellery Queen, Calamity Town |
|
Nature |
16 |
Richard Dempewolff, Animal Reveille; Ivan T. Sanderson, Caribbean Treasure |
|
Poetry |
28 |
A.E. Housman, Selected Poems; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere's Ride and Other Poems |
|
Science |
32 |
Paul B. Sears, Deserts on the March; George W. Gray, Science at War |
|
Sea stories and the navy |
28 |
Edward Ellsberg, Hell on Ice; Marcus Goodrich, Delilah |
|
Self-help, inspiration, etc. |
16 |
Harry Emerson Fosdick, On Being a Real Person; Robert H. Thouless, How to Think Straight |
|
Short story collections |
92 |
Sherwood Anderson, Selected Short Stories; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond As Big As the Ritz and Other Stories |
|
Sports |
30 |
Frank Graham, Lou Gehrig; Negley Farson, Going Fishing |
|
Westerns |
160 |
Clarence E. Mulford, Tex; Ernest Haycox, Deep West; Zane Grey, The Heritage of the Desert |