Uploaded February 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Writer, historian and educator Molly Guptill Manning is the curator of the exhibition The Best-Read Army in the World, currently on view at Rancho Mirage Library. Please join Manning and Skye Patrick as they recount the story of “The Armed Services Editions,” pocket-size paperbacks that were intended to help soldiers pass the time. But the books were also meant to remind them that were fighting for democracy and to draw a sharp contrast between American ideals and Nazi book burnings. Manning collected more than 900 of these volumes while researching her book When Books Went to War.
Writer, historian and educator Molly Guptill Manning is the curator of the exhibition The Best-Read Army in the World, currently on view at Rancho Mirage Library. Please join Manning and Skye Patrick as they recount the story of “The Armed Services Editions,” pocket-size paperbacks that were intended to help soldiers pass the time. But the books were also meant to remind them that were fighting for democracy and to draw a sharp contrast between American ideals and Nazi book burnings. Manning collected more than 900 of these volumes while researching her book When Books Went to War.
