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

Propaganda and fiction, spies and censorship: what does the book hide?
Mao Zedong was a librarian, Stalin was a poet and published poetry, Winston Churchill used a guidebook to plan the invasion of Norway, Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh served in the marines and rose to the rank of captain before retiring to write Brideshead Return ". Single families went to libraries while their relatives fought in the trenches, and during the Cold War, both sides used books to spread their own visions of how the world should be run.

Books and war are not usually talked about in the same context - the former are among the greatest inventions of mankind, and the latter - among the most terrible. But these two topics are closely intertwined and books too often find themselves at the forefront. This is especially acutely felt in the era of modern wars.