Key Points
The Armed Services Editions, a series of specially designed pocket-size paperbacks, were introduced in the spring of 1943..
The show, on view through Dec. 30, is curated by Molly Guptill Manning, a law professor who accumulated more than 900 of the volumes while researching her 2014 book "When Books Went to War."..
So in early 1943, the Council on Books in Wartime, a publishers' group formed in 1942, approached Ray Trautman, the Army's chief librarian, with the idea of producing special paperbacks for soldiers overseas..
One of the most popular titles - at least judging from the more than 15,000 letters from soldiers in her papers, Manning said - was Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which was rushed out as an Armed Services Edition soon after hitting the bestseller list...
But after her 2014 book was published, Manning got emails from soldiers who said they sometimes still needed things to read when stuck in the field without reception or chargers...
