Reading Under Fire: Arming Minds & Hearts During Wartime

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Curated by historian Molly Guptill Manning, author of the bestseller When Books Went to War, the show examines how the United States, Britain, Canada, and Germany supplied reading material to troops during both world wars to sustain morale and offer mental escape from combat. Posters encouraged civilians to donate books and fund distribution efforts, and by the second war printed matter had become, in the exhibition's framing, a symbol of democratic freedom set against fascist censorship.