BOOK AT WAR: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict

A Sunday Times Best Book of 2023, the book proves that books and publishing have deep roots in the history of warfare. Destroying libraries was a thrust at the heart of an enemy society for Aztec and Mayan empires by the Spanish conquistadors, Nazi troops who conquered Poland and burned the sacred books of Jewish communities and in 1992 Serbian troops in the brutal battle for Sarajevo who deliberately aimed their artillery at the major library. Victorious generals have always seen books, like works of art, as legitimate plunder. Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. From the spies' cipher to the Censor's Office, literature has all too often been found on the frontline. Acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree begins with the American Civil War up to the invasion of Ukraine and examines how democracies and their opponents have mobilised a range of literature from the maps and guidebooks that helped plot the invasion of the Normandy, to the scientific papers that inspired ever-deadly weapons of war to advance their ambitions in battle. Printing for Victory, Reading in Wartime, Blacklists, Authors at War, Cleansing Hearts and Minds, books and writers have played their part on the Home Front too, in the imperial propaganda given to schoolboys in England, book burnings across Europe and America, and in the Blitz libraries set up in the London Underground. And not forgetting Biggles and Anne Frank and comic tales of life in Bremen to distract German troops and the commercial success of HMSO publications to practical guides covering coping with attack and the official account of the Battle of Britain, this is an endlessly fascinating treasure trove of details for everyone of us who finds books an abiding and indispensable part of life. 474pp, many illustrations including colour plates.