ON THE CASE

Our winter release for 2025, The “1943” Edition, honors, and is inspired by, one of the most ambitious cultural initiatives in United States history: the Armed Services Editions of popular books published and distributed to troops on the battlefields of World War II.

These publications, designed to be lightweight, inexpensive to produce, and easy to carry, became extremely popular with deployed soldiers and sailors. Between 1943 and 1947, more than 120 million copies representing over 1,200 titles were printed and distributed to troops in theater. They were read, passed along, bartered for, and hoarded by servicemen around the world.

NOTE: For lots more about this amazing chapter in the history of American publishing and design, listen to a new episode of our Staple Day Podcast that features a chat with Molly Guptill Manning, author of When Books Went to War, the definitive account of the history of Armed Services Editions.

While the ASE catalog contained many mystery novels, Dashiell Hammett’s landmark 1929 hardboiled detective story, The Maltese Falcon, never made the cut. We feel like that was an oversight. So for the first time, our Field Notes Brand Books imprint is publishing the original text of The Maltese Falcon, as serialized in Black Mask magazine, in the Armed Services Edition format. It’s the first new ASE since the program was ended in 1947. A copy of the Falcon is included free in winter shipments to our year-long subscribers. It’s also available for purchase separately.

SIDEWAYS

The ASE books were published in a unique, horizontal format which made them lovely as objects and eminently readable as books.

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