The Paperback Show Podcast

In this episode, we look at the history of the Armed Service Edition (ASE) paperbacks which were made specifically for American soldiers fighting in World War II.  The background of America's response to Nazi book burnings, the formation of various groups to provide soldiers with reading material, and the final creation of the group that would select, edit, produce and send over 100 million ASE paperbacks to soldiers all over the world are covered in this episode of the Paperback Show. The impact of this program was profound not only for the soldiers but on post-war American society and culture as well.  There's also a short section on "recent paperbacks" included in the podcast where we cover some of the most interesting paperbacks we've read recently. The primary source of information for this podcast is from the book When Books Went to War: The Stories that Helped Us Win World War II" by  Molly Guptill Manning . This engrossing and well-researched book ch...

 This is a collection of covers of various Armed Service Editions published by the Council on Books in Wartime for the World War II soldier. A simple Google search will yield many more. Collecting the ASE is a lot of fun. Certain titles like Bram Stoker's Dracula (ASE #851, $100) are very collectible, but you can buy many of them for 5-10 dollars depending upon the condition of the books (poorer conditioned books are cheaper). Here's a link to recent Ebay sales of ASE's . I'd recommend your local used bookstore first though. Online prices are usually higher than in-store prices from a brick-and-mortar store. 

Episode 3 of the Paperback Show features a discussion of the novels of Raymond Chandler with bookseller and audio-book producer, Richard Brewer. We focus, in particular, on Chandler's classic - The Big Sleep. It was a lengthy conversation so we released a condensed version of the show for our regular podcast. We are making the uncut version available here as part of our Show Notes (see below). There's also a cover gallery which you can access in a separate post. Ep 3 Show Notes BBC interview with Raymond Chandler. You can download a written version of the interview (Ian Fleming is the interviewer) right here. ( see page 30) Tom Adams  is our favorite cover artist for the Ballantine edition of Raymond Chandler. There is an excellent book out on Adams, who also illustrated the British paperback editions of Agatha Christie. The book is titled: Tom Adams Uncovered.   Ballantine Raymond Chandler paperbacks (covers by Tom Adams) The Big Sleep (novel) by Raymond Chandler His fir...

Episode 3 - Chandler Paperback Covers Tom Adam's Raymond Chandler covers for Ballantine Books. Scans of the covers are from the excellent website Catspaw Dynamics .  Other interesting Chandler covers discussed in the podcast