The Book at War

by Andrew Pettegree

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 480
Rating:

Synopsis:

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book at War, acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace.

Andrew Pettegree’s The Book at War delves into how books, libraries, and literacy more generally have been used in war, in various contexts. There’s a lot to say about the World Wars, and particularly World War II, but the book doesn’t start there or finish there. It begins, in fact, by discussing military education and the kind of libraries provided for the teaching of future officers (often heavy on the classics).

I found it overall a bit slower than I’d hoped, and sometimes more prone to explaining what was happening exactly in the wars discussed; that makes sense, of course, to give people context — but at the same time, some of it felt fairly tangential to the topic of “libraries and readers in an age of conflict” (the subtitle of the book). Sometimes the topic is interpreted very broadly, as when it discussed the leaflets dropped in various efforts with propaganda. Sure, some people read those, but it didn’t feel very related to libraries.

I knew a surprising amount of the information here, in the end, but it was still interesting to reflect on the role of libraries and librarians specifically, and how often they have been collaborators with pretty much whatever the people in power wanted. We often thinks of books and reading as very liberal, but this book gives the lie to that (so do some of the book blogs I see around, to be fair; yeesh!).

Rating: 3/5