Armed Services Editions (ASEs) were small paperback books of fiction and nonfiction that were distributed in the American military during World War II. From 1943 to 1947, some 122 million copies of more than 1,300 ASE titles were distributed to servicemembers, with whom they were enormously popular. The ASEs were edited and printed by the Council on Books in Wartime (CBW), an American non-profit organization, in order to provide entertainment to soldiers serving overseas, while also educating them about political, historical, and military issues. The slogan of the CBW was: "Books are weapons in the war of ideas."
US Serviceman Nunzio Antonio "Jim" Giambalvo reads an Armed Services Edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Armed Services Editions were printed in pairs, one atop the other, to make most efficient use of the digest magazine presses. This rare "two-up" of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Country Lawyer by Bellamy Partridge was never cut apart by the printer, and its edges remain untrimmed.
A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
A blank paperback book
Glued binding
1936 Penguin book. Color-coded orange and white for general fiction
