WWII saves ‘The Great Gatsby’

GatsbyIn honor of the 90th anniversary of its publishing (April 10, 1925), we’ve got an interesting read on ‘The Great Gatsby’ for you!  Mental Floss’s How WWII Saved ‘The Great Gatsby’ From Obscurity is a fascinating piece on how “a group of book lovers – authors, librarians, and publishers” changed how our nation thinks of books.

Wanting to promote titles that would maintain the country’s morale, they founded the Council on Books in Wartime.  Books, they argued, were “weapons in the war of ideas.”  In February 1943, they embarked on an ambitious effort: shipping titles to soldiers overseas.  The concept was as simple as it was idealistic.  While the Nazis were busy burning books, American soldiers would be reading them.”

This post is worth the read – it’s a little bit about history, literature, war, and social change.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/o83aore, licensed under CC BY 2.0